642 The American Century: Literature since 1945and the audience/chorus dance, shout, and sing in response to the nervous fire of
his words and the contagious nature of his rhythms. And as far as concerns content,
this has had as one consequence a new assertiveness of tone and aggression of
gesture: a renewed eagerness to see poetry as, to use the words of one black poet,
D. L. Graham (1944–), “survival motion set to music” – or, to borrow a phrase from
another, Carl Wendell Himes, Jr. (1946–), “magic ... spells, to raise up / return,
destroy, and create.”
“The black artist’s role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he
knows it.” The author of this remark is Imamu Amiri Baraka and it powerfully
summarizes a presiding aim that he has shared with many other black writers of this
period: another one, Ron Karenga (1945–), for example, has put it this way, in
Kwanza; Origin, Concepts, Practice (1977): “all our art must contribute to
revolutionary change and if it does not, it is invalid.” To such remarks, however, it is
worth adding a gloss. Not all black poets feel this way. Some even seem content to
follow the path of Countee Cullen, by producing work that is virtually
indistinguishable from the white tradition. David Henderson (1942–), for instance,
writes poems like “Sketches of Harlem” (1968) that resemble those of the white
street poets of New York; while, in a different key, as collections like Resurrections
(1978) and Appearances (2003) show, the poet G. C. Oden (1923–) chooses to be
closer in much of her writing to Louise Bogan (“The Carousel”) or Elizabeth Bishop
(“A Private Letter to Brazil”) than to other black writers, male or female. Even the
poets who have committed themselves to a specifically black revolutionary art
cannot be entirely separated from the white tradition. Rebellion is hardly a black
monopoly, after all; and much of the most trenchant white American writing
has also been preoccupied with the gap between performance and promise: America
as the writer “knows it” – which invites destruction – and America as he or she
dreams of it – which begs to be realized, first in words and then in deeds. A gloss of
this kind may be necessary, then, but it should not take away from the vital fact that,
at its best, recent black poetry is different. The difference can even be measured in
terms of Baraka’s own progress as he moved from imitation of white forms, however
innovative or subversive, to the formulation of a purely black aesthetic.
Baraka established his reputation under his given name of Leroi Jones. His first
published work was a play, A Good Girl is Hard to Find (1958). Two other plays soon
followed, The Baptism (1964) and The Toilet (1964), mostly concerned with issues of
personal identity. Before them, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961)
appeared, a collection of personal and often domestic poems. In the earlier stages of
his career, while he was still known as Leroi Jones, Baraka was clearly influenced by
those white American poets who, like him, saw themselves as alienated from the
cultural mainstream. There are several poems that recall the work of Frank O’Hara:
in “Epistróphe,” for instance, Baraka uses the random, chancey rhythms of casual
speech and imagery assembled by a mobile vision to capture the oddity of a familiar
vista, “what you see (here in New York).” The figure of Charles Olson, in turn, hovers
behind “How You Sound??,” Baraka’s announcement of his aesthetic published in- “ ‘How You SOUND??’ is what we recent fellows are up to,” he declared.
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