In
a continued effort to spotlight African American achievements and to
encourage our young people to explore and discover various avenues to
display and express their God-given skills and talents, today, we
want to highlight a few of our great African-American poets. African
Americans have a long, and strong, tradition of writing stretching
back centuries, and the annals of literature are filled with amazing
African-American poets and poems.
Phillis
Wheatley
(c1753-1784)was
the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry: Poems
on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral
appeared
in 1773 when she was probably still in her early twenties. Wheatley
had been taken from Africa to America as a young girl, but was freed
shortly after the publication of her poems; the short poem ‘On
Being Brought from Africa to America’ reminds her (white) readers
that although she is black, everyone – regardless of skin color –
can be ‘refined’ and join the choirs of the godly. The
poem betrays its eighteenth-century context and the attitudes towards
race at the time, but Wheatley’s voice is an important one in
eighteenth-century American – indeed, world – poetry.
Paul
Laurence Dunbar
(1872-1906) was the son of African parents who had been slaves prior
to the American Civil War. Dunbar also wrote novels and plays, as
well as penning the lyrics for the 1903 musical comedy, In
Dahomey –
the first all-African-American musical that was ever produced on
Broadway.
But
it was as a poet – one of the first internationally popular
African-American poets – Dunbar would achieve real fame and
success. He died young, of tuberculosis, aged just 33.
Langston
Hughes (1902-1967) was considered by many as the finest
poet of the Harlem Renaissance, he often wrote about the lives of
African Americans living in America, especially in New York, in the
early twentieth century. In his poem, ‘I, Too’ from 1926, and
with an allusive nod to Walt Whitman’s poem ‘I Hear America
Singing’, Hughes – describes himself as the ‘darker brother’
– highlights the plight of black Americans at the time, having to
eat separately from everyone else in the kitchen when guests arrive,
but determined to strive and succeed in the ‘Land of the Free’.
Robert
Hayden (1913-1980) served as Consultant in Poetry to the
Library of Congress (now better-known as the US Poet Laureate); he
was the first African-American poet to hold the office. His 1966
poem, ‘Those Winter Sundays,’ is a recollection of childhood
memories involving Hayden’s parents, and is one of Hayden’s
best-known poems.
Dudley
Randall (1914-2000) is as well-known for publishing
some of the greatest African-American poets of the twentieth
century as he is for writing poetry himself. As the founder of
Broadside Press in 1965, he would go on to publish Audre Lorde,
Gwendolyn Brooks, and many other notable writers of the day. His
poem, ‘Ballad of Birmingham,’ is a powerful poem about the
bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, written that
year and published as a broadside in 1965.
During
the Harlem Renaissance, Gwendolyn
Brooks (1917-2000)
built upon a new kind of poetry – drawing on jazz rhythms and
African-American Vernacular, for her
1959 poem,‘We
Real Cool’,
which
was inspired
by seeing a group of young boys
in
a pool hall when they should have been in school. How do they view
themselves, she wondered?
This poem attempts to give them a voice – and in doing so, reflects
the new phenomenon of the 1950s: the teenager.
To
God be the Glory for how wonderfully He has gifted us to bless all of
humankind with our various gifts and talents!
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