Customer Reviews

The Vintage Book of African American Poetry

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

 

 

The Vintage Book of African American Poetry, edited by Michael S. Harper and Anthony Walton, is reminiscent of a somewhat earlier anthology EVERY SHUT EYE AIN'T ASLEEP (also edited by Mr Harper and Mr Walton). The poems in the Vintage Book span three centuries, from Jupitor Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, to Carl Phillips and Reginald Shepherd; the 20th century, as one might expect, is most generously and gloriously represented. This reviewer has always prized the work of Countee Cullen and of Robert Hayden; and is grateful to make the acquaintance of Sterling A. Brown and Gwendolyn Bennett (her poem "To A Dark Girl," written early in the last cnetury, is an irreducible greatness); Langston Hughes is shown to advantage in the selection of his work, many of the chosen poems being new to this reader. It shames us that hithertofore we had not been familiar with the work of Boston-born William Stanley Braithwaite. Claude McKay and Jean Toomer appear in these pages, McKay's finely wrought sonnets being familiar from other anthologies. New to us, and a gift for which the reader is grateful, is Margaret Walker's "October Journey," of Keatsian loveliness.

Stylistic diversity exists here, and surfaces in a salient fashion as we reach the middle of the twentieth century: Gwendolyn Brooks (both formal and colloquial); Bob Kaufman (can we cavil at the omission of his fine eulogistic poem "Afterwards, They Shall Dance"?); Etheridge Knight (whose diamond-like haiku enliven our sense of the possibilities of the form); and the Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, whose "Bounty" is indeed a marvel. Raymond Patterson's baldly unsubtle imitation of Wallace Stevens ("Twenty-Six Ways of Looking at a Blackman") strikes this reader as a culpable generosity of inclusion on the part of the anthologists.

We find merit in the poems of Audre Lorde and Lucille Clifton; Sonia Sanchez's piece urging nuclear disarmament does not affect us positively, on either a political or an esthetic level, a slack garrulity that is too long-winded to be a slogan and too formless to be a poem. Jay Wright, Michael S. Harper, Al Young and Toi Derricotte (almost exactly contemporaneous) fashion lyrics of beauty, ingenuity, toughmindedness and considerable appeal. We value Marilyn Nelson's poem (charmingly sardonic) called "Emily Dickinson's Defunct." Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, and Rita Dove -- justly renowned poets -- are in the Vintage Book (Komunyakaa a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1994, Dove a recent U. S. poet laureate). Nathaniel Mackey's poems display an unparalled intelligence and ability to renovate and renew the language; his work should be more widely known. Elizabeth Alexander cages wrath within formality in "The Venus Hottentot", and is quite effective in her sequence of poems about Muhammad Ali. And finally, an autumnophile reviewer must congratulate Anthony Walton on the achievement of his lyric "The Summer Was Too Long"; great poetic force is also to be found in his poems on Thelonious Sphere Monk and Emmett Till.

In short, this is a splendid anthology, recommended to all. There are lapses into the ineffectual stridency of sloganeering; nonetheless, we venture to say that the reader will be nourished and fortified by the majority of the poems in the Vintage Book of African American Poetry. These are lyrics of immitigable beauty, of consummate artistry, of serious esthetic accomplishment.

I like this book, but I can only give it two stars because it left out too many important African American poets. The back cover claims that the book presents "the definitive collection of black verse in the United States," but I keep shaking my head at the absence of Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Naomi Long Madgett, Dudley Randall, E. Ethelbert Miller, June Jordan, Mari Evans, Angela Jackson, Wanda Coleman and Patricia Smith. How could the editors leave out such giants? By the year 2000 (when the book was published), all ten of those poets had made ground-breaking contributions to African American poetry as well as the evolution of poetry in general as a universal art form. As for the poets they did include, I agree with most of them, but I question the importance of esoteric poets like Reginald Shepard and Carl Phillips. I also wonder why they only included one or two poems by Melvin Tolson, Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madhubuti and Gayle Jones, yet included many more for some of the other poets.

An excellcent collect of African American Poetry. Never really been interested in poetry, but after reading this book can't wait to read more poetry any kind of poetry.

There are very few poetry books that can be used as a comprehensive textbook in a college class...but this is one of them. Every author has a well-written mini-biography that is rather in-depth for how short it is, and the poetry found within is not always the poet's greatest or most remembered work; in fact, the book tries to convey more than just the popular poems that any famous poet within the book might be known for. It actually inspires the reader to learn more about the other poetry these poets may have written! There are definitely moments when I forget that I'm reading for a class, and I read for the sheer pleasure of it. This book belongs in your personal library, even if you are wary of poetry as a whole.

The book itself focuses on the evolution of African American poetry, from the very structured beginnings to the more contemporary here & now. It's a captivating read.

Everything was perfect. My review was delayed because my ex-roomie accidentally took the package when she moved out. And just today did I finally drive over to her new place of dwelling and picked it up.

Thanks!

i paid for expedited shipping and it was over a week late. but the book was in great condition.

a collection of poetry from as far back to phillis wheatley to today, so if you a fan of black poets from older day, you can find some of their works in this collection