Customer Reviews

The Black Poets

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was introduced to this text as an black poetry starved undergraduate about 15 years ago. It simply mesmerized me...was literally a book that I carried around in my pocket for years. Now as a professor of Africana Studies and English, I almost feel priveleged to share this book with my students as some are mesmerized for the first time and I get mesmerized again and again. Dudley Randall remains one of the overlooked giants of black literature...not so much for his own work, but his commitment to building the canon, like his work at Broadside Press with then young poets like Sonia Sanchez and Don. L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti) and this volume of poetry.

This book was required reading for a graduate class that I had, and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was simply great. I was introduced to many poets whom I'd never heard of and that was the best part, because I feel that many Blacks don't know about poets who were not mainstream, this leaves a lot of important writers to dangle in the wind without every being recognized by the very people for whom they wrote. This book was great in particular I liked the seculars they were hilarious, they reminded me of the epitaths we used to read in American Lit in high school. Great little book!!!!

I am an author and a poet and will state that this is an excellent job by Dudley Randall. The poems in this anthology flow very well. The section on the Harlem Renaissance is very pleasing; know the struggles encountered and the determination of will to succeed, the poets during that era showed strength and courage and are well documented. The book is a history lesson in itself regarding poets of the past and present. There is a distinct contrasting of poets who are classified as folk and literary poets. The additional distinction between pre-renaissance and post-renaissance poets is also made in the book. Overall, the poems from poets in the anthology are outstanding and give a great blending of African-American History.

I first laid eyes on the late, great Black poet and publisher, Dudley Randall, back in 1969, as a freshman accounting student at the University of Detroit, located on Livernois and McNichols, in Detroit, Michigan.

I already knew about Randall because I graduated from Cass Technical High School, one of Detroit's jewels, in June, 1969. At Cass, I majored in Computer Programming. But, because I was always an avid reader, huge fan of poetry, and loved to write, I took several advanced English courses, where we studied a few of Randall's poems.

So, when I got to U of D, the first thing I heard was that Dudley Randall, the author of "the Ballad of Birmingham", a sad, but powerful tribute to the 4 little Black girls murdered by a bomb planted in the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, a mere 18 days after the historic March on Washington, was the reference librarian.

His desk was on the first floor. And, whenever I saw him, he was working methodically and quietly, among stacks of books that were scattered about on what must have been his desk. It wasn't until I took several Black Literature courses, during the latter days of the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, that I discovered the real Dudley Randall and his impact on Black literature and American letters, in Detroit and around the country.

Using his own money, Randall founded and financed the Broadside Press, located near the U of D campus, while working full time as a reference librarian. And his pioneering work as a Black publisher and mentor to a generation of young Black poets, like Don Lee, later known as Haki Madhubuti, and ex-convict, Etheridge Knight, best known for his poem, "the Idea of Ancestry" and the folk poem, "I Sing of Shine", opened up the closed doors of the White publishing world, and introduced White and Black America to a generation of Black poets, who had a lot to say.

In one of my Black literature courses, taught by Mary Helen Washington, years before she became Dr. Mary Helen Washington, of "Black Eyed Susans and Midnight Birds" fame, one of the books we used, "the Black Poets", originally published in 1971, has to be called Dudley Randall's magnum opus.

He was not only the editor of this unprecedented anthology, but some of his most complex and profound poetry, like "Black Poet, White Critic", "Roses and Revolutions", and "A Different Image", was included.

As implied by each of the seven 5-star reviews, and explicitly stated by Dudley Randall in his scholarly introduction, from the beginning of the Black sojourn in America, through the 1960's, "the Black Poets" is the definitive anthology of Black poets, and their struggle to define themselves, the Black experience, and the movement towards the creation of what Randall called "a new poetry".

This book is an absolute treasure. It should be be read and re-read by anyone who loves literature, in general, poetry, in particular, and is open-minded enough to benefit from the wisdom and profound insights this ancient art provides into the complexities, contradictions, failures, hopes, indomitable spirit and triumphs of the Black people who often died in attempts to make the promise of America a realilty.

From the simple, but power packed rhythms, rhymes, and dialect of the "folk poetry" of unknown Black bards:

"We raise de wheat,
Dey gib us de corn;
We bake de bread;
Dey gib us de crust;
We sif the meal;
Dey gib us de huss;
We peel de meat;
Dey gib us de skin;
and dat's de way
Dey take us in),

to Countee Cullen's 20th Century musing about what Black people, forcibly removed from our native land, may have lost, and the real meaning of the African Diaspora,

What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronze men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang,
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
from the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinamon tree,
What is Africa to me?,

Dudley Randall's, "the Black Poets", carefully and repeatedly read, takes American literature, poetry, and the idealistic, pristine life it often depicts, and turns it upside down, so that anyone, Black or White, with the eyes, heart, and willpower to discern and accept the truth, about the real Black experience in America, can be inspired to begin the hard work of making this country the land of freedom and equality, for everyone, that God meant it to be.



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If you could only own one book of poetry by African-American poets, this should be the one. It is -- on the one hand -- a legitimate scholarly collection of poetry stemming from slaves through the 1960s,and including renowned poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes. But, it is also a barebones, emotional journey into the hearts and minds of a people who have faced the most brutal oppression and adversity ever inflicted upon a people in America -- and survived to tell the tale. But anyone looking for single-minded thinking from the black `community' will not find it here. This collection shows the rich diversity of thought, experience, and insight of African-Americans, including those that push an examination of thought among Civil Rights-minded people in the 60s beyond the traditional with such poems as "What is the Color of Lonely?" This is a book one should own. I bought the library binding edition because it was the only hardcover version available at the time, Worth the extra cash for a hardcover book that will last a lifetime!

I first encountered "The Black Poets" as a college student back in the 1970's. It features a wide selection of poems by many well known Black Poets. Many are humorous, such as "I sing of Shine" others romantic, others revolutionary, but all thought provoking. I couldn't find my old copy so I repurchased another recently. This book is definitely worth owning. It will bring you pleasure whenever you pick it up.

My father loved me enough to expose me to this book when I was younger. I didn't truly appreciate it until I got older and experienced more in life. This book has a variety of poetry. It is all beautiful. I highly recommend this book.

I remember reading this book while in middle school. And, I am a 2002 high school graduate. I found this book in the library, and its very impowering - real. The poetry resonates with Mildred D. Taylors, Roll of Thunder poem. I was fascinated by the Run n*****- run master comin get you poem. Its a good book!
Lots of old great African American written poetry.