DOVE has noted, Tolson confronts the horror of
slavery, soothed only by the faith embodied in sor-
row songs.
Throughout much of his career, Tolson’s work
was assessed on the reception of A Gallery of
Harlem Portraits. His use of numerous and often
obscure references placed him in the modernist
company of Ezra Pound and Eliot and gained him
praise for his radical experimentation, yet white
commentators often criticized Tolson’s layering of
classical allusions atop the references to the his-
tory and culture of Africans and African Ameri-
cans they considered more credible. In his preface
to the Libretto for the Republic of Liberia, Allen
Tate hinted that the long work was derivative and
“breaks down into Whitmanesque prose-para-
graphs into which Mr. Tolson evidently felt that
he could toss all the loose ends of history, objur-
gation, and prophecy” (142).
In contrast, black critics, especially those in
the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT of the 1960s, occa-
sionally complained that his art relied too heavily
on classical allusion and too little on black cul-
ture and history. His work, they claimed, did not
reflect the experience of African Americans but
was intended, instead, to impress a white literary
audience. He was warned that such complicated
verse would outrage the readers of Black Gazette,
Ebony, and The Negro World. Michael Berube
especially notes that Robert Davis, a black critic
for the Chicago Sunday Bee, praised Libretto as a
whole, but lamented its “use of well worn allu-
sions” (169) and its uneven images. Tolson in this
case agreed, for he revised one stanza highlighted
by Davis. However, legend has long held that Tol-
son undertook the revision at the behest of Tate
and not Davis.
Tolson, however, is best known for three major
poetic works: Rendezvous with America (1944),
Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), and
Harlem Gallery (1965). Robert Farnsworth cites
the claim that in the Libretto “Tolson’s integrity
would not allow him to retreat into the folksi-
ness of Langston Hughes—making things ‘sim-
ple’—nor would it allow him to lose his own
voice in mere imitation. He gives us folk-wisdom
and out-Pounds Pound to show what is involved
in a country that is profoundly both African and
American” (173). The poem reflects Tolson’s long
study of Africa and his belief that, as he noted in
“The Negro Scholar” (1948):The ground the Negro scholar stands upon
Is fecund with the challenge and tradition
The Ghana knew, and Melle, and Ethiopia,
And Songhai.... (178)Libretto traces the history of Liberia, but in
doing so poetically resurrects the power of the
Songhai Empire and ends in hope at the end of
World War II.
However, it is the 150 epic pages of Harlem
Gallery that are most often cited as Tolson’s mag-
num opus, a work that was intended to be the first
of five parts. In 24 sections, each corresponding
to a letter of the Greek alphabet and subtitled
“The Curator,” he offers what Raymond Nelson
claims is a poem full of “extensive and precise
learnedness and uncompromising obscurities,...
syncopation of puns, neologisms, double nega-
tives, labyrinthine syntax, and acrobatic prosody”
(“Harlem Gallery”). The need for annotation, in
fact, spawned Robert Huot’s 1971 dissertation
and Raymond Nelson’s more recent annotated
rendering. The reception at publication was far
less ambiguous. Black critics tended to decry its
“vast, bizarre, pseudo-literary diction” which was
certainly “not ‘Negro’ to any significant degree.”
These comments allude to Karl Shapiro’s claim
in the foreword that “Tolson writes and thinks in
Negro” (Nelson, “Harlem Gallery”). Even at the
end of his life, Tolson’s poetry proved controver-
sial, though in the controversies over the poems,
too few bothered to read them.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Berube, Michael. Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers:
Tolson, Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Farnsworth, Robert M. Melvin B. Tolson, 1898–1966:
Plain Talk and Poetic Prophecy. Columbia: Univer-
sity of Missouri Press, 1984.500 Tolson, Melvin B.