Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present

by Joanne V. Gabbin (Editor), Center for American Places (Editor)

Overview

Furious Flower: African-American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present

Edited by Joanne V. Gabbin

The Furious Flower Conference of 1994 represented the largest gathering of African American writers at one event in nearly thirty years. In that crucial span of time, African American poetry had evolved into an art less overtly political and more introspective; it had also shown dramatic growth—both in the number of its readers and its practitioners.

As a second Furious Flower Conference prepares to convene, Joanne Gabbin has assembled a remarkable selection of works by the Furious Flower participants. The forty-three poets cover three generations, ranging from such established voices as Michael Harper, Nikki Giovanni, and the late Gwendolyn Brooks, in whose honor the conference was organized, to a host of rising young writers who are reimagining America in the language of a hip-hop nation.

Furious Flower provides a fascinating collective portrait of African American poetry at the close of the twentieth century—as well as an indication of where it may be headed as we enter the twenty-first. The book includes biographies of the contributors and a dynamic collection of performance photographs by C. B. Claiborne featuring many of the Furious Flower participants as they appeared at the original 1994 conference.

Contributors

Gwendolyn Brooks * Samuel Allen * Adam David Miller * Pinkie Gordon Lane * Naomi Long Madgett * Dolores Kendrick * Garrett McDowell * Raymond R. Patterson * Alvin Aubert * Amiri Baraka * Sonia Sanchez * Lucille Clifton * Jayne Cortez * Eugene B. Redmond * Michael S. Harper * Askia M. Touré * Sterling D. Plumpp * Toi Derricotte * Everett Hoagland * Haki R. Madhubuti * Bernice Johnson Reagon * Nikki Giovanni * Jerry W. Ward Jr. * Lorenzo Thomas * Yusef Komunyakaa * Kalamu ya Salaam * Dorothy Marie Rice * Lamont B. Steptoe * Quo Vadis Gex-Breaux * E. Ethelbert Miller * Mona Lisa Saloy * Afaa Michael Weaver * Rita Dove * Opal Moore * Cornelius Eady * Carole B. Weatherford * Lenard D. Moore * Sharan Strange * Adisa Vera Beatty * Elizabeth Alexander * Jabari Asim * Joel Dias-Porter (DJ Renegade) * Thomas Sayers Ellis * John Keene * Natasha Trethewey * Major Jackson * Kevin Young * Garrett McDowell

Published in association with the Center for American Places

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813922539
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	02/13/2004
Series:	Center Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

	Preface	xv
	Introduction	xvii
	The Second Sermon on the Warpland	3
	Winnie	4
	A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon	5
	We Real Cool	9
	The Near-Johannesburg Boy	10
	Uncle Seagram	11
	The Apple Trees in Sussex	14
	A Moment, Please	15
	The Lingering Doubt	16
	To Satch	17
	My Trip	19
	Forever Afternoon	22
	Song of the Wheel	23
	Girl at the Window	25
	Lyric: I Am Looking at Music	25
	Children	26
	Reluctant Light	29
	The Last Happy Day	30
	Packrat	33
	For Gwendolyn Brooks: As I Civilize a Space	35
	Where the Grieved Ones Sat	36
	The Drowned River	38
	Harlem Suite	41
	Forerunner	43
	Baobab	44
	Nat Turner in the Clearing	46
	James Baldwin, 1924-1987	46
	December 1982/Detroit	47
	I Am	50
	In the Funk World	55
	John Coltrane (1926-1967)	55
	Ballad	59
	Letter to Ezekiel Mphahlele	59
	Under a Soprano Sky	61
	For Sweet Honey in the Rock	62
	Philadelphia: Spring, 1985	64
	For Sister Gwen Brooks	65
	Dialysis	68
	Donor	68
	1994	69
	There It Is	72
	The Guitars I Used to Know	73
	The Heavy Headed Dance	76
	New York Seizures	79
	11-haiku-poem for a magnificent million	81
	Dear John, Dear Coltrane	84
	Last Affair: Bessie's Blues Song	85
	High Modes: Vision as Ritual: Confirmation	86
	Summer Worlds: A Mythic Landscape	89
	Aboriginal Elegy: The Once and Future Queen	91
	O Lord of Light! A Mystic Sage Returns to Realms of Eternity	93
	Be-Bop	98
	History, Hollers, and Horn	98
	Ornate with Smoke	100
	from Mary	106
	The Minks	111
	After a Reading at a Black College	112
	For Black Women Who Are Afraid	112
	From Ground Zero	115
	How Could All That Have Happened Here?	117
	Time Break	120
	Books as Answer	126
	The B Network	127
	Mothers	128
	Greed	132
	They Are All Falling around Me	136
	The Wrong Kitchen	139
	Legacies	139
	Nikki-Rosa	140
	I Have Felt the Gulf: Mississippi	143
	Journey 55	143
	After the Report from Iron Mountain	144
	Dangerous Doubts	148
	L'Argent	148
	Back in the Day	149
	Songs for My Father	152
	Sharing is hereditary	159
	The Call of the Wild	159
	Directions for Understanding Modern Jazz Criticism	162
	Taproots	164
	Ambrosia	164
	Remains	165
	Spookism	167
	Contraband	167
	Coming Ashore	168
	Jazz Rain	170
	Padded Steps/Sister Song (a litany)	171
	Wisdom Is	174
	Memory Waves	175
	Roy Campanella: January, 1958	178
	Bringing Back the Draft	178
	Whispers, Secrets, and Promises	178
	The "N" Word	180
	This Poem Is for You, My Sister	183
	We've Come This Far	186
	Thelonius	189
	The Poets	190
	Freedom Ride	193
	Claudette Colvin Goes to Work	193
	Rosa	195
	The Enactment	195
	Eulogy for Sister	198
	The Taste of Life Going On	199
	How I Got Born	201
	Composite	201
	Birthing	202
	The Tan Chanteuse	207
	From Birmingham to Bristol in a Boxcar	207
	Queen Ijo's Blues	208
	Airport	211
	Black Girl Tap Dancing	211
	Offering	214
	Night Work	214
	Hunger	216
	Distance	219
	Memorization	219
	Geography	220
	The Josephine Baker Museum	222
	At the Beach	224
	Passage	225
	1st Lt. Vernon J. Baker: Hero on the Hill (Company C, 370th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Division)	228
	Let's Just Tell It	230
	Baby's Breath	234
	Fireflies in a Jar	237
	Thursday Poem	239
	Subterranean Night-Colored Magus	240
	Sir Nose D'VoidofFunk	244
	View of the Library of Congress from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School	246
	After C (3): Tayloriana	249
	The Haymarket	249
	Limen	252
	Bellocq's Ophelia	252
	Drapery Factory, Gulfport, Mississippi, 1956	253
	Indian Song	256
	Block Party	256
	To Afaa Michael S. Weaver	257
	Some Kind of Crazy	257
	Quivira City Limits	260
	Everywhere Is out of Town	261
	East Jesus	262
	Poetic Retrospective: A Blooming in the Valley Garrett McDowell	263
	Notes on the Poets	267
	Acknowledgments	283