Phyllis Wheatley’s 18th century poem piqued my curiosity about subsequent American poets of “sable race”—especially women. So I went to The Poetry Foundation website (my go-to source for poets and poems) and spent several enjoyable days searching for and reading these poets.
My previous post, keyed to Ernest Hemingway and Henry James, was about the making of decisions, and this new one is related to it. Through examples from Shakespeare and Frederick Douglass, I’ll try to explain what the relationship is.
Along with Richard Wright, many other African American writers have spoken about the awakening they received from books. Ralph Ellison recalled that he “read voraciously,” that “the act of reading” was “an apprenticeship in freedom.” James Baldwin read “every single book I could get my hands on.… Books taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive.”
I’ve been making my way through books of photographs on the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. Nearly always, he’s dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. It’s the consistency of this visual record that by contrast makes John Wilson’s portrait of King (1985) so mesmerizing. Wilson (1922–2015) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, and muralist known for powerful paintings, illustrations, and other works of art that honor Black dignity, racial justice, and equality.
Lawrence’s “The Migration Series” is painted with Casein tempera, a paint derived from milk protein. HeLevi’s poems are composed of air from the lungs, the vibration of the vocal cords, and the shaping of sounds with the mouth and throat. The voice was translated into visual form, alphabetic writing, and was initially preserved in iron gall ink written on parchment or vellum. This poem, these paintings: wonders. The might of human imagination and artistry.
Richard Wright, the Black American author most known for the novel Native Son, once contributed an introduction to Black Metropolis, a famous sociological study of black life conducted by St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton Jr. in Chicago circa 1945. In many ways, his introduction is still worth revisiting, as it tackles the racial strife between Americans, warfare among the socioeconomic classes, and America’s place on the tumultuous world stage.