Overview

The definitive guide to a major African American poet.   This volume promises to be the definitive guide to Calvin C. Hernton's unparalleled poetic career, re-introducing readers to a major voice in American poetry. Hernton was a cofounder of the Umbra Poets Workshop; a participant in the Black Arts Movement, R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall, and the Antiuniversity of London; and a teacher at Oberlin College who counted amongst his friends bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Odetta. As a pioneer in the field of Black Studies, Hernton developed a theoretical and practical pedagogy with lasting impact on generations of students. He may be best known as an anti-sexist sociologist, following in the footsteps of W.E.B. Du Bois, but Hernton viewed himself, above all, as a poet. This volume includes a generous selection of Hernton's previously published poems, from classics like the often anthologized ""The Distant Drum"" to the visionary epic The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong, reprinted in full for the first time since 1964, alongside uncollected and unpublished material from the Calvin C. Hernton papers at Ohio University, a new critical introduction, and detailed notes, chronology, and bibliography.   [sample poem]   The Distant Drum   I am not a metaphor or symbol. This you hear is not the wind in the trees. Nor a cat being maimed in the street. I am being maimed in the street It is I who weep, laugh, feel pain or joy. Speak this because I exist. This is my voice These words are my words, my mouth Speaks them, my hand writes. I am a poet. It is my fist you hear beating Against your ear.

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Reviews

"""This necessary volume contextualizes and celebrates a complicated and visionary poet's work.""--Publishers Weekly ""Hernton is appealing to the powers, the forces of change, that can inhere in poetic language, powers that insist on new connections, new spaces for thought; that hold out for an ongoing metamorphosis.""--Howard Slater, Penniless Press ""The publication of the Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton (Wesleyan University Press, 2023), edited by the scholars David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer, presents the occasion to assess Hernton's incredible range. More than 220 pages, including many previously unpublished and uncollected poems, an insightful set of notes, a meticulous bibliography, and a deft introduction by the editors, Selected Poems is a long-overdue retrospective of one of the 20th century's most important yet least-known Black American poets. Selected Poems is the first opportunity for readers to encounter the full scope of Hernton's poetry in one volume.""--Nick Sturm, Poetry Foundation ""Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton restores this important activist and writer to his rightful place in American literary history, covering in detail a prolific career that framed and helped ignite the cultural explosion that was the Black Arts Movement.""--Tyrone Williams, David Gray Chair, SUNY Buffalo ""In this collection, the full range of Calvin Hernton's voice soars, from smoky Umbra into registers sacred and profane, raging and comic, righteous and tender. A revelation.""--Tsitsi Jaji, author of Mother Tongues ""Reading Hernton's selected poems is like stepping into a time machine to witness the rise of the Black Arts Movement first hand. Hernton's lyrical dexterity--his ability to transition from a blues-inflected poetic mode to poems that model a chord progression in jazz to one that both embraces and simultaneously critiques poetic modernism in the U.S.--is unmatched. David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer have done American poetry and poetics a tremendous service by recovering one of the Black Arts Movement's founding voices.""--Herman Beavers, Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President's Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania"

Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton restores this important activist and writer to his rightful place in American literary history, covering in detail a prolific career that framed and helped ignite the cultural explosion that was the Black Arts Movement. --Tyrone Williams, David Gray Chair, SUNY Buffalo In this collection, the full range of Calvin Hernton's voice soars, from smoky Umbra into registers sacred and profane, raging and comic, righteous and tender. A revelation. --Tsitsi Jaji, author of Mother Tongues Reading Hernton's selected poems is like stepping into a time machine to witness the rise of the Black Arts Movement first hand. Hernton's lyrical dexterity--his ability to transition from a blues-inflected poetic mode to poems that model a chord progression in jazz to one that both embraces and simultaneously critiques poetic modernism in the U.S.--is unmatched. David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer have done American poetry and poetics a tremendous service by recovering one of the Black Arts Movement's founding voice. --Herman Beavers, Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President's Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Author Information

CALVIN COOLIDGE HERNTON (1932--2001) was an American sociologist, poet, and author, particularly renowned for his 1965 study Sex and Racism in America and for co-founding the Society of Umbra. ISHMAEL REED (Oakland, CA) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, composer, playwright, editor, and publisher known for his satirical works challenging American political culture. His numerous achievements and awards include a MacArthur Fellowship and a lifetime achievement Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. DAVID GRUNDY (London, England) is the author of A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets. He is currently a British Academy Fellow at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, where he is working on two manuscripts, Survival Music: Free Jazz Then and Now, and Never by Itself Alone: Queer Poetry in Boston and San Francisco, 1943-Present, and a further edited collection on Umbra. LAURI SCHEYER (Glencoe, IL) is Xiaoxiang Scholars Program Distinguished Professor and founding Director of the British and American Poetry Research Center at Hunan Normal University (China). Her many prior books include A History of African American Poetry and Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry.

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