National Poetry Month, day 3: Dining with "The Black Poets"

I have to find these video clips of Amiri Baraka doing "lowkus" at the Brave New Voices protest reading/rally last summer. That is too perfect for today's selection, The Black Poets, edited by Dudley Randall. The anthology was released in 1971, and features over 300 pages of poetry from the folk poems of our ancestor's early days in bondage through the liberation voices of the 1960's. It contains spirituals (recognizing the close relationship between song and poem), literary poetry, Harlem Renaissance-era poets, post renaissance, and a huge selection of sixties poets. It contains a healthy serving of the most well-known names in black poetics: Hughes, Dunbar, Bontemps, McKay, Cullen, MY MAN STERLING A BROWN, Brooks, Clifton, Baraka, Sanchez, Don Lee, Giovanni, even Tolson (of Great Debaters fame).

One poem to whet your whistle, from Conrad Kent Rivers, titled:

In Defense of Black Poets

(for Hoyt)

The critics cry unfair
.....yet the poem is born.
Some black emancipated baby
.....will scratch his head
wondering why you felt compelled
.....to say whatever you said.

A black poet must bear in mind
.....the misery.
The color-seekers fear poems
.....they can't buy for a ten-dollar
bill or with some clever contract.
.....Some black kid is bound to read you.

A black poet must remember the horrors.
.....The good jobs can't last forever.
It shall come to pass that the fury
.....of a token revolution will fade
into the bank acounts of countless blacks
.....and freedom-loving whites.

The brilliant novels shall pass
.....into the archives of a 'keep cool
we've done enough for you' generation:
.....the movement organizations already
await their monthly checks from Downtown
.....and

only the forgotten wails of a few black
.....poets and artists
shall survive the then of then,
.....the now of now.

Thank you, Mr. Rivers! We shall remember!


************************************

And now, my humble poem for the day:

a sort of ode to motivation
Hadassah Ayodele

i thought if i wrote you a poem
you'd stop by long enough
to pick it up en route to the airport.
i'm sure you have more important
things to do than coax me
off the couch: power lunches
in hollywood hills, tennis
with venus and serena,
record deals to sign, sermons
to inspire.
............. to be honest,
we were never that close
anyway. you had no patience
with my tendency to stare
down the sun and blow the dust off
mommy's old 45's the night before
a due date.
...............maybe one day, you'll
pencil me in under charity and skim
this poem, all the while noting the piles
of paper on my desk, dresser,
ironing board, and suggest
that i title my forthcoming chapbook
the twelfth of never.
...........................no sweat--
i still plan to list you first
in the dedication.

fyi: the series of periods in the poems are only there to show the spacing, since I can't seem to figure out how to convince blogger to print extra spacing in a line... how unpoetic!