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This book deserves to be better than it is. It falls short
of being the kind of scholarly resource and definitive anthology that it
might have been, and that is (on the strength of the poems shown here)
needed. First of all, the title: it is simply 'an anthology'. No dates are given, leading to the
false impression that this is a contemporary anthology; you have to read four
pages into the introduction to find (as an aside, while talking about other
things) that 'The proposed project has as its chief goal the preservation of
the works of poets such as those of the Dasein/Howard group, the Free Lance
group and the Umbra associates' (p. xvi) and 'a larger context of African
American mid-century poetic experimentalists' (p. xv). So 'African Americans'
in the title is limited to the United States of America and to a particular
period. So, no Black writers from the Caribbean, Canada, or Central and South
America. No poets from the Harlem Renaissance, nothing from Langston Hughes,
even though he wrote experimentally and was born earlier than any of the
poets represented here. Significant later poets are excluded: Wanda Coleman,
Nathaniel Mackey, Victor Hernandez Cruz (although there are other Black poets
included who started writing in the 70s and 80s). These delimitations are
confusing and not spelled out in the book, and the editors are silent on the
criteria they used for inclusion in the anthology, apart from the statements
above.
This lack of contextualisation continues throughout. I would love to know
more about the Dasein Group, what its philosophy was, whether it was as
Heidegerian as it sounds. In an anthology from a university press, you would
expect each poem to have composition date, place of first publication, as a
minimum. In this anthology, individual poems are given no contextual
information. With writers who have had long and varying careers, such as
Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, it would be helpful to know at what stage in his c
areer the pieces
reprinted here are from. We are not even told if they are presented in
chronological order (presumably, they are). Author/biographical notes are
short, and often simply seem to follow what the authors say about themselves,
little-magazine style; statements which are often minimal or misleading.
Birth and death dates are given randomly (a double pity since the poets
appear in alphabetical order, making it impossible to read or interpret the
anthology chronologically, the way I would prefer). Quotations in the
Introduction are not given references. There are no contextualising or
explanatory notes (something that British readers are likely to need; these
poems mostly date from the mid-twentieth century and contain dated and
culturally specific references). These notes are needed particularly acutely
for some of the more experimental writers. The note on Cecil Taylor says that
'he often includes his poetry as part of his jazz performances'. For anyone
who has not heard him perform, this gives the misleading impression that he
simply reads (or even sings) his poetry to music, whereas in fact his poems
are word-scores in the way that the written version of Schwitters' Ursonate is only an indication for a complex piece of
sound-poetry.
The texts of the poems themselves are presented with minimal textual
intervention, and in some cases suffer from it. Underlining seems to be
favoured over italicisation, in the style of old typewriters that used
underlining as a default for italics; although italics are sometimes
(inconsistently) used in poem subtitles. Spelling mistakes (as opposed to
deliberate textual experimentation or non-standard English) are retained,
without comment (assuming they have not actually occurred in the process of
copying). The obviously visual poems have been retyped, which leads me to
mistrust their appearance (if there had been better typesetting elsewhere, I
might not have worried about this).
Do I sound picky? These are all things I would expect to be covered, or at
least explained/justified/glossed, in any competent anthology of poetry, of
whatever period, from a university press. Anything less seems to be a
disservice to the poets who are represented here.
These editorial lapses are made up for by the quality of the poems in the
book. Of the 38 poets represented, there are many great writers that I had
not heard of before. Many of them never had collections published, having
only appeared in now scarce anthologies from the 50s and 60s. These are all
poems that deserve to be resurrected. For instance, here is Russell Atkins, a
poet now in his 80s who has only had his work published in small presses:
perpetual
stales, wearies, old;
ambition
yores behind--
there is of
on and wayside,
traffic
slowly eternals itself
into
distance
familiarity
coins more
commonplaces:
such are
these days!
some slivers
of aspiration?
stir of a
wish?
a wraith
waving a grey scarf
('Irritable Songs' no. 7, p 26).
The number of neglected and obscure poets is high in this volume, which is
the book's major redeeming feature. Some poems are in fact printed here for
the first time, for instance the Melvin B. Tolson poems. I would in fact have
liked more from poets like Tolson (none of Tolson's published pieces are
included, despite being out of print). The more canonical and in-print Black
poets (Baraka, Ishmael Reed) could have been reduced or excluded to fit in
more of these.
I will conclude with one of the poets I had not heard of, and wished I had.
Norman H. Pritchard (untitled, p. 208):
WE
NEED----please read this and see if you
qualify, if
you do not care to take advantage of this
please pass
it on to a friend.
grown on
instead opens the door
a blind went
pulling away
large numbers
covered with rows
decidedly
towards them
some of its own
dressed away
with the rain
flying in borrowed
kind
things in the
basket
beside
twisted ruddy before
without those
mostly or an under
plundered
nearly though feasted
delighted so
as to be carried
Buy this anthology for the poems. You might have to work out contexts for
yourself.
© Giles
Goodland 2006
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