My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 70

My original impulse for doing the
article was simply that I love a
lot of the black poetry I’ve been
encountering and absorbing over the
past decade or so. Tracy K. Smith,
Kevin Young, Terrance Hayes,
Major Jackson, A. Van Jordan,
Natasha Trethewey, Thomas Sayers
Ellis, Nikky Finney — I really
just love their work…

Maryemma Graham, one of the editors
of the Oxford Guide To African American
Literature in turn responded:
it’s a shame that Jeff didn’t
understand that he can’t base [an]
article on “like” alone. That’s the
first thing we tell our students.
It’s not enough just to “like”
something. Can we get a little
deeper please? So, his response
reminds us just how seriously
black poetry, black writing in
general is taken by some folks. Jeff
should stick with the Food Critics
section, since that’s what he is
trained to do. This is the nature of
contemporary journalism. Little
depth, get the quotes you need in
a hurry, and go for what’s popular
at the moment. You don’t need
content and you don’t need to get
contrasting views!! After all, all
black people must be on the same
page, one scholar must speak for
all, and “they” will be grateful for
the sound bites.

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

I had problems with some features of
the Black Arts Movement, but Black
Arts writers did more to expand an
interest in poetry among average black
Americans than those who assert that
Black Arts was “short lived” or is on
the decline. Last I heard, Kwanzaa, a
product of the Black Arts Movement,
is worth over 250 million dollars. What
do these critics know that Macy’s
doesn’t? Total all of the revenues from
Black Arts conferences, transportation,
housing, book sales, etc. over the
decades and how many millions would
you come up with?

Gordinier also cites his list of poets as
making a “breakthrough,” and their
writing proof that black poetry has
“evolved” and “taken wing” — where
before it was floundering, presumably?
A quick study indeed! I’ve been studying
black literature since the 1960s and I’m
still learning. For example, it was only
within the last year that I came across
the work of Albery Allson Whitman
who was one of the popular writers
of his day because he wrote poems
that lionized the confederate general
Stonewall Jackson. If, according to
Gordinier, Natasha Trethewey’s (2012)
Thrall is an example of a “breakthrough,”
then I don’t get it. Though competent,
her work is pretty traditional and
conservative in comparison to works
written by black poets of the past and
the contemporary period. I wrote to
him and suggested that he was in over
his head. Gordinier answered:

69

Black male writers shouldn’t write
about their experience? They shouldn’t
write about ‘stop and frisk’; being
hassled by cops; murdered by vigilantes;
charged higher interest rates on
mortgages; used for experimentation by
prisons and universities? They shouldn’t
write about being maneuvered into
private prisons by the police who serve
as this nefarious institution’s recruiters?
The current situation is a lot like
the post-Civil War period when blacks
were arrested for phony “vagrancy”
charges and handed over to white farmers
as free labor. Hip Hoppers like Tupac
Shakur were influenced by the Black
Arts movement — which, like a literary
loyalty oath, one has to renounce in
order to get a Norton contract.