their symbols that illustrated the most important
tenet of the retreat—it was to be a safe haven for
black poets.
At its onset, Cave Canem was an all-volunteer
effort. Its only component was the weeklong sum-
mer workshop, where fellows were invited to study
with reputable African-American poets while
completing an intensive writing regimen through-
out the week. Many notable poets have taught at
Cave Canem, including SONIA SANCHEZ, Elizabeth
Alexander, AL YOUNG, YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, and
LUCILLE CLIFTON.
Fifty-two fellows are invited to the workshop
each year. The founders decided early on to keep
the number of fellows to a minimum so that the
retreat would remain close-knit. The fellows at-
tend the retreat for three sessions and have a five-
year span in which to complete them. Cave Canem
does not adhere to any particular school of poetry;
its fellows are from various backgrounds and write
in numerous voices and styles.
Since 1996, with the help of volunteers and the
program’s director, Carolyn Micklem, the summer
retreat has flourished into the Cave Canem Foun-
dation. In addition to the original workshop, the
foundation holds numerous public readings as
well as regional workshops designed to reach writ-
ers who may not have the opportunity to attend
the summer workshop.
In 1999, Cave Canem began sponsoring a first-
book contest for African-American writers whose
work has not been published by a university or
commercial press. Each year, the directors also pub-
lish an anthology featuring the work of fellows and
faculty who attend the summer retreat. In 2006 the
Cave Canem Reader was published to commemo-
rate the organization’s 10th anniversary.
Remica L. BinghamCelestine, Alfred Bernard (1949– )
Born in Los Angeles, California, to Alfred and
Irene Jane Celestine, Al Celestine graduated from
Sherman E. Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest,
California, in 1967. He attended Fresno State, the
University of California at Riverside (UCR), and
University of California, Berkeley, majoring in so-
ciology. During his undergraduate studies at UCR,
Celestine became a student activist. He led the
black student union in its effort to prevent UCR’s
chancellor from dismantling its pioneering, de-
gree-granting Black Studies Department. Totally
committed to validating and promoting black cul-
ture during the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, Celestine
produced plays, sponsored poetry readings, and
invited well-known writers, including the poet
AMIRI BARAKA, to UCR’s campus; he also published
a student literary journal.
After publishing his first poem in an Ohio State
University journal, Celestine published Confessions
of Nat Turner, his first collection of poems, in 1978,
with Many Press. The themes in Confession remain
central to his work: political activism, celebration
and critique of black life and black identity, and
personal quest for sexual identity. Rich in irony,
Celestine’s poetry, often impressionistic or Haiku-
like, demands the reader’s total engagement; gen-
erally, his speakers leave little or no wiggle room.
For example, in a poem from Confessions that cri-
tiques and celebrates the BLACK POWER movement
of the 1960s, Celestine writes, “silence died? / what
funeral, / yesterday’s black man”; the rich irony
found in the last line forces readers to think about
the validity and complexity of this movement and
its demand that the heretofore silent and nearly
invisible American Negro morph into a more Af-
rican-centered, self-identified black man.
In a poem concerned with the quest for personal
identity and sexuality, the speaker celebrates and
records salient rituals of the black church, while
critiquing what for him is the suffocating oppres-
siveness of Christianity from which the adolescent
speaker must escape, exploring and suggesting
the complexity of black ideological, spiritual, and
generational shifts—resonating, as he does, with
central themes in the works of JAMES BALDWIN,
particularly GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN:... And again: Big Mama in whom the
Lord
Sang now and then like a magpie
Testified.
Rolled in red dust of the threshing floor.
Celestine, Alfred Bernard 93