And as I groped in darkness and felt the pain of millions, gradually, like day driving night across the continent, I saw dawn upon them like the sun a vision. --Dudley Randall, from "Roses and Revolutions" In 1963, the African American poet Dudley Randall (1914-2000) wrote "The Ballad of Birmingham" in response to the bombing of a church in Alabama that killed four young black girls, and "Dressed All in Pink," about the assassination of President Kennedy. When both were set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1965, Randall published them as broadsides. Thus was born the...
And as I groped in darkness and felt the pain of millions, gradually, like day driving night across the continent, I saw dawn upon them li...
Frances E. W. Harper is a central figure in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African-American literature and intellectual thought. The foremost poet of the "free colored community," she was also a lecturer, educator, essayist, and novelist. A prolific champion of the abolitionist and feminist causes, she has come to be recognized for the critical role she played in the rise of the women's movement, particularly in the development of the black women's movement. Yet neither her art nor her political insight was preserved by subsequent generations until recently.
In this...
Frances E. W. Harper is a central figure in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century African-American literature and intellectual thought. ...
Do poets' surroundings shape their viewpoint and work? Abandon Automobile seeks to address this question by bringing together the work of more than one hundred of Detroit's most acclaimed and accessible poets. Writing about location as if it were a living entity, these poets visualize Detroit as a variety of complex archetypes-the city becomes a savior, a beast, a nurturing mother, a seductress, a friend, an enemy. Like the city itself, the poetry represented is diverse and the poems are by turns tender, forceful, introspective, and vital. In the introduction to the volume, Melba Joyce Boyd...
Do poets' surroundings shape their viewpoint and work? Abandon Automobile seeks to address this question by bringing together the work of more than on...
