introduction 11forces us to consider poetry as militant action. Moreover, Baraka’s
‘Expressive Language’ ( 1963 ) introduces ideas of colonialism and
slavery to a discussion of the wresting of power in poetic lan-
guage. He articulates the need for poetry to assert racial difference
through forms that challenge tradition. Baraka chillingly asserts
that ‘being told to “speak proper” ’ means that ‘you become fl uent
with the jargon of power’ (p. 377 ). We could add to these Allen
Ginsberg’s visionary poetics, his meditations on sexuality and a
queering of poetic expectation in ‘Prose Contribution to Cuban
Revolution’ ( 1961 ):
Meanwhile for a sense of the rightness of life I trusted people
most, that is Friendship & the recognition of the light in peo-
ple’s eyes; and from then on I pursued & idealized friendship
especially in Poesy which was the manifestation of this light
of friendship secret in all man, open in some few. (p. 336 )Allen’s anthology presents a compendium of infl uential approaches
to confi guring the poetics of a new American poetry. Reading the
anthology half a century later, one is aware how the poetic essay
and manifesto raise crucial ideas regarding the responsiveness
of poetry to confi gurations of race, performance, sexuality and
gender.
BLOOD, BREAD AND POETRY: GENDER AND POETICS
In her cornerstone essay on gender and poetry ‘Blood, Bread and
Poetry’ ( 1979 ) Adrienne Rich refl ects upon the momentum of the
1960 s as releasing a revolutionary ambition:
The idea of freedom – so much invoked during World War
II – had become pretty abstract politically in the fi fties.
Freedom – then as now – was supposed to be what Western
democracies believe in, and the Iron Curtain Soviet bloc
was deprived of. The Existentialist philosophers who were
beginning to be read and discussed among young intellectuals
spoke of freedom as something connected with revolt.^23