What Counts as American Poetry?

WHAT COUNTS AS AMERICAN POETRY IN 2019?

Any assessment of what counts as American poetry in 2019 must be based on specificity and marked by a brutality that academic poets who wish to remain in good standing with other academic poets avoid. It is a cardinal sin to announce that a poet who has won prizes and has been applauded by the Establishment is remarkably bland and  ordinary, remarkably gifted in being pseudo-universal, remarkably capable of turning cognitive tricks.  Refusal to celebrate can condemn one to severe punishment, the vengeance Wanda Coleman suffered for making her honest assessment of poetry by Maya Angelou.  Having integrity is more important than having commerce with correctness by way of singing uncritical praise-songs.  In the domain of American poetry (and especially in its ethnic sectors), we seem to have a surplus of blind mice sniffing about for artisan cheese.

Truth be told, what counts as American poetry at the moment in African American  ethnic territory follows a rule of three:

1) What counts as American poetry

Is

2) What counts as American poetry (under the selective scourge of race)

Is

3) What counts as American poetry (marked by the pathology of the prize).

Poetry that overtly refuses to worship conditions 2 and 3 is either ignored or stamped "unfit and beneath the dignity of the canon."  Contradictions abound. In those rare moments  when anointed, ego-invested  poets speak  about other poets, it is most unlikely to hear  constructive words addressed to the  poets who are not baptized by prizes and  whose work might be found in such  anthologies as The Spoken Word Revolution (Slam, Hip Hop & the Poetry of a New Generation) [Sourcebooks, Inc, 2003] and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press, 2002). They evidence respect mainly for poets anthologized in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African  American Poetry (2013) and What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America ( University of Alabama Press, 2015).  The territory is incompletely mapped and  transmogrified into a literary political circus of obedience to the rule of three.

One might suppose that the aesthetic accomplishments of poets I will not embarrass by name  and of  the singers, writers and rappers who are indeed genuine poets who refuse to be bought and sold in the markets of the prize are not "innovative."  How absurd  is that?  One might suppose that poets who are not certified by Cave Canem are illegitimate.  How very absurd is that?  Despite the truly remarkable work Cave Canem has done in redefining what counts as American poetry, the institution isn't immune to criticism of what it has been complicit in producing: a tribe of prize-worshippers and a climate that obscures the complex dynamics of writing and consuming African American poetry in the 21st century. It would surprise no one if the New York Times matched its recent coverage of black male writers and of the four  black playwrights who have impact on American theatre with a hegemony-driven story on contemporary African American poetry and what counts as American poetry.

One can beat the newspaper to the punch by reading

Derricot, Toi. "I": New and Selected Poems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019).

Derricot, the co-founder of Cave Canem, has published  a puzzling record of the many "I"s  (first person pronouns) she has been since April 12, 1941.  Compare "Among School Children" by William Butler Yeats with Derricot's "Among School Children" (page 9) as a touchstone of what craft (and I'm not using that word to refer to writing) might be within the cloisters of Cave Canem.  Give special attention to what she claims was Richard Wright's "life-long mental suffering," suffering that "fueled his writing."  Recall that Yeats wrote in stanza VIII of his poem

Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of it own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

Recall that Wright transformed his suffering and hunger into an extraordinary instrument to analyze the worlds he lived in.  Recall that in diverging ways Yeats and Wright addressed externals, political situations at once private and  public.  What one finds Derricot doing in "Among School Children" (and indeed in the whole of her book)  is drilling down to explore internals, the exclusively  private tortures of race, class, color, gender and sexuality.  What shocks is the ennui of her verse, a replicating weariness to be honest about her pronoun "I,"   that is not the hallmark of poetry by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, poets with whom she is sometimes compared, that is not the hallmark of poetry by Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Adrienne Rich with whom she ought to be compared in robust discussion of what counts as American poetry. Anticipate that the New York Times coverage I imagine from a pre-future angle would argue that African American ennui is the cat's meow.

One might surmise Derricot has been rewarded with praises and prizes for being an exemplar of that strand of African American poetic tradition that takes care not to offend you can guess who. She plays it safe, and it is likely she has taught many a Cave Canem poet the fine art of being safe and successful in catholic obedience.  She is entitled, as is any poet,  to be quiet.  To indulge in the luxury of being quiet. But what truly counts in American poetry in 2019 is not being quiet.  What truly counts is the courage to be dangerous, to be, as was June Jordan,  a menace with a blush of panache.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            May 4, 2019