A Black Arts Poetry Machine Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics
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A Black Arts Poetry Machine Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics Series Editor: Daniel Katz, University of Warwick, UK Political, social, erotic, and aesthetic—poetry has been a challenge to many of the dominant discourses of our age across the globe. Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics publishes books on modern and contemporary poetry and poetics that explore the intersection of poetry with philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalysis, political and economic theory, protest and liberation movements, as well as other art forms, including prose. With a primary focus on texts written in English but including work from other languages, the series brings together leading and rising scholars from a diverse range of fields for whom poetry has become a vital element of their research. Editorial Board: Hélène Aji, University of Paris Ouest-Nanterre, France Vincent Broqua, University of Paris 8 - Vincennes/Saint Denis, France Olivier Brossard, University of Paris Est Marne La Vallée, France Daniel Kane, University of Sussex, UK Miriam Nichols, University of the Fraser Valley, Canada Peter Middleton, University of Southampton, UK Cristanne Miller, SUNY Buffalo, USA Aldon Nielsen, Pennsylvania State University, USA Stephen Ross, University of Warwick, UK; Editor, Wave Composition Richard Sieburth, New York University, USA Daniel Tiffany, University of Southern California, USA Steven G. Yao, Hamilton College, USA Titles in the series include: A Black Arts Poetry Machine, David Grundy Affect, Psychoanalysis, and American Poetry, John Steen City Poems and American Urban Crisis, Nate Mickelson Lyric Pedagogy and Marxist-Feminism, Samuel Solomon Forthcoming titles: Queer Troublemakers, Prudence Chamberlain A Black Arts Poetry Machine Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets David Grundy BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © David Grundy, 2019 David Grundy has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third- party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-6196-5 ePDF: 978-1-3500-6197-2 eBook: 978-1-3500-6198-9 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Critical Poetics Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents Abbreviations vii Acknowledgements ix Introduction: Amiri Baraka, the Umbra Workshop and the Writing of Literary History 1 Baraka and Umbra 1 ‘A populist modernism’?: Umbra and the politics of form 14 ‘A conspiracy to blow up New York’ 22 Black arts legacies and chronologies of mourning 27 Chapter summaries and methodology 30 1 ‘A Tale of Two Cities’: Umbra, Internationalism and the Death of Lumumba 35 ‘This is the time!’ On Guard for Freedom protest the UN 35 ‘A new perspective opens up’: On Guard after the Lumumba protest 41 Ishmael Reed’s ‘Patrice’ and aesthetic distancing 46 Rights and riots: Lorenzo Thomas’s ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ 48 ‘Cry Freedom’: Askia Touré 54 ‘There’s no hiding place in a horn’: A word on music 61 Conclusion 65 2 ‘Poems That Kill’: Amiri Baraka’s Magic Words 69 ‘Black Dada Nihilismus’ (1963): ‘A cult of death’ 70 ‘Black Art’ (1965): A politicized objectivism 84 ‘Black People!’ (1966): Magic and the law 90 3 ‘Space of a Nation’: David Henderson Writes the City 99 The poetry of David Henderson: An introduction 99 ‘Harlem to Lower East Side’ 101 ‘Keep on Pushing’ 107 ‘Yin Years’ 116 4 Language, Violence and ‘the Collective Mind’: Calvin C. Hernton 125 Calvin C. Hernton: An introduction 126 ‘The Gift Outraged’ 129 vi Contents ‘Jitterbugging in the Streets’ 131 ‘On Racial Riots in America’ 133 ‘Dynamite Growing out of Their Skulls’ 136 ‘The psychology of the damned’ 139 ‘Manhood’ and gender 143 Conclusion 149 5 ‘Home Is Never Where You Were Born’: Calvin Hernton’s ‘Medicine Man’ 151 Umbra poets and the South 151 ‘Chattanooga Black Boy’ 156 ‘Medicine Man’ 158 ‘Dressed at last to kill’ 159 Gris-gris 163 ‘Thirty times ten removed’ 164 ‘To those residing in evil bite’: Cannibalism and incorporation 165 ‘Singing in that rock!’ 169 Conclusion: Mourning, melancholia and shame 171 6 ‘Return to English Turn’: Tom Dent 175 Tom Dent: An introduction 175 New York to New Orleans 179 ‘Return to English Turn’ 189 7 Memory and Myth in Lorenzo Thomas’s ‘The Bathers’ 197 Introduction 197 Umbra and Birmingham 202 ‘The Bathers’ 207 Conclusion: ‘If Our Heads Are Harder’ 219 Notes 233 Bibliography 236 Index 256 Abbreviations Works by Amiri Baraka Autobiography The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka BM Black Magic: Collected Poetry, 1961–1967 BF Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing Conversations Conversations with Amiri Baraka Fiction The Fiction of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones H Home: Social Essays TDL The Dead Lecturer SP Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones Works by Others DMOH David Henderson. De Mayor of Harlem EM Lorenzo Thomas. Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth-century American Poetry FOTSF David Henderson. Felix of the Silent Forest MM Calvin Hernton. Medicine Man: Collected Poems TB Lorenzo Thomas. The Bathers Other Abbreviations BAM Black Arts Movement BART/S Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School BLM Black Liberation Movement BPP Black Panther Party for Self-defense viii Abbreviations CAM Caribbean Artists Movement COINTELPRO Counter Intelligence Programme (FBI) CORE Congress of Racial Equality CPUSA Communist Party of the United States of America FLN Front de Libération Nationale (Algeria) FST Free Southern Theater HUAC House Un-American Activities Committee KKK Ku Klux Klan LES Lower East Side NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NOI Nation of Islam RAM Revolutionary Action Movement RNA Republic of New Afrika SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference SNCC Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (renamed Student National Coordinating Committee in 1969) UPC Union des Populations du Cameroun Acknowledgements First of all, I wish to thank my PhD supervisor, Michael Hrebeniak, for his encouragement and support during this project’s initial emergence as a doctoral thesis. Thanks also to my examiners, Paul Gilroy and Alex Houen, for their extremely useful comments on my work: their advice helped immensely in its transformation into a book. Many thanks to Daniel Katz, series editor at Bloomsbury, for his invaluable advice, and to the external readers for their comments on the manuscript. Thanks to Michael Tencer and Eben Wood for sharing archival material on Amiri Baraka and on Umbra. I am also grateful to the AHRC, BAAS, Robinson College, Cambridge, and the Faculty of English, Cambridge, for their financial support. Thanks, too, to the staff of the following libraries: University Library, Cambridge; British Library, London; University of Sussex Library Special Collections; the Fales Library, NYU; the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; and the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library. Portions of the first chapter were presented at the BAAS Annual Conference in Canterbury, 2017, and the ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco, 2018; of the second, at Princeton University and Cambridge University in 2013 and at the ICA, the Centre for Marxist Education in Massachusetts, and the Bay Area Public School in Oakland in 2014; and of the fifth, at Cambridge University in 2015. My thanks to the organizers, and to the other participants, for discussion. For permissions to reprint material, thanks are due to SLL/Sterling Lord Literistic Agency/Grove Press and the Schomburg Centre for Research in Black Culture for work by Amiri Baraka, Antone Hernton for work by Calvin Hernton, and Aldon Nielsen for the estate of Lorenzo Thomas. All other quotations fall under the category of fair use. In the composition of a book about the relation of poetry to the social, friendship has played a key role. I want to extend thanks to those with whom this work has been discussed and shared. They include Janani Ambikapathy, Tom Allen, Lucy Beynon, Sean Bonney, Christina Chalmers, Peter Gizzi, Ian Heames, Rosa Van Hensbergen, Owen Holland, Tobias Huttner, Lisa Jeschke, Justin Katko, Frances Kruk, Richard