Cornish, Sam (1935– )
A prolific poet, editor, and juvenile author, Cor-
nish was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He left
high school during his freshman year but later
attended Goddard College and Northwestern
University. He served in the U.S. Army Medical
Corps from 1958 to 1960. After returning from
the military service, Cornish worked as a writ-
ing specialist for the Enoch Pratt Library, where
he edited Chicory with Lucian W. Dixon. In 1968
Cornish received both a National Endowment
for the Arts grant and the poetry prize from the
Humanities Institute of Coppin State College. In
1969 he moved to Boston, where he became an
education specialist on projects emphasizing cre-
ative writing for children. He served as a special
consultant to the Educational Development Cen-
ter in Newton, Massachusetts, where he worked
on the Open Education Follow Through Project
from 1973 to 1978.
Cornish has produced a large body of work,
beginning with his first widely accepted collec-
tion of poetry, Generations, and Other Poems
(1964), which he published through his own
Beanbag Press. His other notable collections are
Sam’s World: Poems (1978), Song’s of Jubilee: New
and Selected Poems, 1969–1983 (1986), and Folks
Like Me (1993). AMIRI BARAKA and LARRY NEAL
included him in their history-making anthology,
BLACK FIRE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRO-AMERICAN
WRITING (1968) as did CLARENCE MAJOR in his
New Black Poetry (1969). Cornish is also the au-
thor of four books for young adults: Your Hand in
Mine (1970), Grandmother’s Pictures (1974), My
Daddy’s People Were Very Black (1976), and Walk-
ing the Streets with Mississippi John Hurt (1978).
In addition, he has published a memoir, simply
titled 1935 (1990).
Cornish’s breakout collection of poetry, Gener-
ations, is an attempt to write a universal collection
that deals with the triple axes of African-Ameri-
can literature, kinship, and history. Going beyond
physical bonds, kinship is “social bonding, a rec-
ognition of likeness in context, concern, need,
liability, and value.” This theme is expressed in
“Harriet Tubman #2,” a celebration of Tubman
and her mother, and their survival:Lord, while I sow earth or song
the sun goes down. My only mother
on a dirt floor is dying....
I think
of the children
made in her and sold. (Generations, 10)The harsh, though natural rhythms of life (“sow
earth” “sun goes down,” “mother... dying”) are
dishonored by the commodification of procre-
ation itself (“the children / made in her and sold”)
yet revered for representing the persistence of the
will to live.
In Folks Like Me, Cornish continues his theme
of kinship, expanding it to “African Americans of
all descriptions—working people, entertainers,
disaffected radicals, sober churchgoing folk—and
they step forth one after the other from the decades
of our century to present their testimony.” It is
Cornish’s deep commitment to kinship that allows
this variety of voices to emerge. The expression of
kinship—the African-American experience—can
be found in his brief yet poignant poem “Negro
Communists”:When white
workers find
hotel rooms
the Negro worker
hits the street. (Folks Like Me, 48)Here, Cornish’s speaker registers his support for
the working class, the proletariat, who must unite,
as the Communists demand, with the other work-
ers of the world. Cornish’s black worker must pro-
test, “hit the street,” in order to not sit quietly and
be discriminated against or oppressed. Although
the speaker seems to embrace communist ideol-
ogy, however, there is an ironic twist, as the white
worker, although a member of the proletariat, still
enjoys privileges the black worker does not because
he is able to “find / hotel rooms.” The white worker120 Cornish, Sam