Unit 2 Self-Absorption



Unit 3 African-American Women

Claims for Poetry

|Audre Lorde |Poems are not Luxuries |282 |

|Alice Walker |In Search of Our Mother's Gardens |459 |

Contemporary American Poetry

|Ai 1947 |

|Gwendolyn Brooks 1917-2000 |

|Lucille Clifton 1936 |

|Rita Dove 1952 |

|Marilyn Nelson 1946 |

Our third poetry unit of the semester shifts focus to a trend in subject matter and voice. The essays of Lorde and Walker and the poems of Ai, Brooks, Clifton, Dove and Nelson help us to form a better understanding of the role of Contemporary poetry in American society. These poets use poetry as a powerful tool to communicate ideas that were nearly impossible to communicate verbally. Poetry and writing gave each of these woman a voice in a community that wanted most often to take a voice away.

In her essay “Poems are not Luxuries” Lorde seems to echo or mirror some of Bly’s ideas in our previous Unit. She comments on the revolutionary nature of poetry by stating, “Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand the implementation of that freedom.” Like Bly, she sees that the poem has some work to do. Lorde is quite unlike Bly, however, in her interpretation of how that work should be accomplished. To that end, she defines what poetry means to Black American women. She states, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean—in order to cover their desperate wish for imagination without insight.” Notice the contrast in tone and message with some of the essayists in our last Unit. As you read the poems in Unit 3, think about the historical, political and social differences between these poets and how it has influenced their product.

In her essay “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” Walker uses a passage written by Jean Toomer in Cane about the nature of creativity in African American women. Walker uses this passage as a starting point to explore the very creativity Toomer chronicled, and to attempt to understand how it relates to her generation of Black women. Walker asks, “How was the creativity of the Black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years Black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a Black person to read and write?” Walker struggles with the image of Black women in American culture, and states, “Black women are called, in the folklore that so aptly identifies one’s status in society, ‘the mule of the world,’ because we have handed the burdens that everyone else—everyone else—refused to carry.” Her essay examines what that role has meant to African American women.

The poems in this unit represent a range of diverse experience, but they can all be traced back to a common denominator—the existence of race as a defining factor. Ai can best be considered a multi-ethnic poet, but she is included here because her politics and social outlook call cultural boundaries into question. In her poems, characters are stripped to bare essentials. Her narrators express their struggle for existence. The poems avoid self pity and confessionalism because of their use of humor. Ai stated in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth: “I do have a sense of humor. It's warped, but it is a sense of humor.” Her poems might often seem disturbing, but a current of humor can be found in them.

As you read the 5 poets in this unit, notice especially the unique qualities of the work of Brooks, who was born 19 years before the other poets. Do her sensibility, mentality, politics, and themes appear in those poets who were born after her? What influence might she have had on the other poems in this unit? You will notice Brooks’ bold political and social criticism and observation. We Real Cool is one of her most famous and anthologized works, and is an interesting study on criticism, since critics have attributed meaning to the poem that she did not have.

When you read the poems by Clifton, think about ways in which she writes as a woman, and ways she writes as an African American woman. Clifton is blessed with a lively sense of humor about herself and poetry. “poem to my uterus” avoids self-pity through humor. Ask yourself what role humor plays in all of these poets, and why it might be important.

You may notice a different tone in the poems of Dove. Here poems are not as confessional but instead are fictive—they use the personal to create lyrical dramas rather than to exorcise demons. Parsley is an example of historical presence in her work.

Compare that to the work of Nelson. A Wreath for Emmett Till was written especially for young readers coming to terms with an act of racist violence.

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