Keeping Black poetry alive: helping all students, regardless of race, to appreciate the craft is often a challenge, scholars say.

Keeping Black poetry alive: helping all students, regardless of race, to appreciate the craft is often a challenge, scholars say. Thomas Sayers Ellis assistant professor of creative writing at NewYork's Sarah Lawrence College Sarah Lawrence College,at Bronxville, N.Y.; primarily for women; chartered 1926, opened 1928 as Sarah Lawrence College for Women; renamed 1947. It is noted for its creative arts program. , is one of many scholars fighting forthe soul of Black poetry, a struggle that takes place largelyoff-campus. Unless one is accepted into a top-level graduate poetryprogram, such as Boston University's program or the Iowa WritingWorkshop, a poet's opportunities are limited. And Black poets facean even tougher road. E. Ethelbert Miller, director of the African American African AmericanMulticulture A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.See Race. ResourceCenter at Howard University, says the problem has been brewing for awhile. In the 1980s, Miller tried to get 100 or so historically Blackcolleges and universities Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are institutions of higher education in the United States that were established before 1964 with the intention of serving the African American community. They are often liberal arts colleges or universities. revved up about creative writing programs.Only a dozen responded. Most of the institutions didn't see thevalue in investing in the programs, arguing that creative writingwasn't a marketable skill. Xavier University of Louisiana Xavier University of Louisiana is a private, coed, liberal arts college that is also a historically African-American (HBCU) Roman Catholic University located in uptown New Orleans, Louisiana on the edge of the Gert Town neighborhood. was oneof the HBCUs that did respond favorably, creating an undergraduatepoetry program. Xavier and Spelman College both currently haveundergraduate creative writing minors, and Howard and Morehouse Collegeeach offer one undergraduate class. But none of the top-tier HBCUs offergraduate-level poetry programs. "Just like anything else, programs grow out of demand,"says Dr. Eleanor W. Traylor, chairman of the English department atHoward. "We have an undergraduate creative writing program, but ourgraduate program is focused on training future faculty." But Traylor doesn't rule out the possibility that Howard willinstitute a graduate poetry program in the future. "When demand changes, things shift. I see this will be anevolving eventuality, not long in coming. We have no will or intent ofbias against it" she says. "The success of poetry in popularculture, and the fact that many writers hold academic degrees and seekemployment as university professors, have both prompted interest increative writing." But Haki R. Madhubuti Haki R. Madhubuti (born Don Luther Lee on February 23 1942 in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States) is a renowned African-American author, educator, and poet. He received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa, and served in the U.S. Army from 1960 to 1963. , founder of Third World Press and director ofChicago State University's master's of fine arts program, saysit will never happen. "Traditional HBCUs suffer from a lack of vision," hesays. "Most of these people are bought by corporate America. Thehumanities and certainly the arts are secondary to what HBCUs see astheir mission. It takes a different perspective on the world to see howimportant art is." Keeping Black Poetry Alive "To free, at last, all Black text. That's my goal,"states Ellis, author of the 2005 poetry collection The Maverick Roan roana coat color consisting of a relatively uniform mixture of white and colored hairs, giving a 'silvered' hue; self-describing colors are red-roan, blue-roan, chestnut roan. .Having always taught at predominantly White universities, he admitsfeeling a conflict between his own idiom and the language of the poetryhe teaches. Ellis' goal is especially relevant given the proliferation ofgraduate-level creative writing programs at predominately Whiteuniversities. Originally designed to teach "verse," many ofthese programs have increasingly focused on trendy, anything-goes poems,with minimal training in craft. As these programs were incorporated intothe traditional curriculum, Black poets who chose to write moreidiomatically id��i��o��mat��ic?adj.1. a. Peculiar to or characteristic of a given language.b. Characterized by proficient use of idiomatic expressions: a foreigner who speaks idiomatic English. and politically than their White peers began to get leftbehind. Their work, derived and inspired by rap, jazz, folk and spokenword, became increasingly rare on campus. In an effort to create a network and give Black poets moreexposure, Harvard University undergraduate Ellis and his colleaguesfounded The Dark Room Collective in 1988. The workshop for Black writerssoon evolved into a reading series where many young poets got theirstart. Among the list of notable Dark Room alums are Natasha Tretheway,John Keene, Tracy K. Smith Tracy K. Smith (b. April 16, 1972, Falmouth, Massachusetts) is a prize-winning African American poet who teaches at Princeton University. She lives in Brooklyn.[1]Her poems have appeared in journals such as Boulevard, Callaloo, , Gulf Coast, , Major Jackson, Sharan Strange and KevinYoung. Though The Dark Room disbanded in 1996, it paved the way for newopportunities. Today's aspiring poets generally only have twochoices if they want to study poetry on a graduate level: either enrollat a traditionally White institution or head to Chicago StateUniversity. Although not technically an HBCU, Chicago State ispredominantly Black The institution offers the master's in finearts degree and also houses the Gwendolyn Brooks Center, which will hostits 16th annual writers' conference in October. Madhubuti founded Chicago State's MFA program four years ago. "That has always been my mission" he says. And nowChicago State "is the only program worldwide that's centeredaround African-American literature." He says there is a growingneed for Black writers. "It's best to be nurtured among your own" Madhubutisays, adding that Black students have cultural differences with theirWhite peers, and that their work needs to be critiqued from a differentpoint of view, by like-minded professors. Becoming part of the literary elite usually requires a prestigiousbook deal and a tenured teaching position, and this is causingdiscomfort for Ellis and many others. His latest project, Soul March:Notes for Black Poets, is a grab bag of reflections, rants, instructionsand dialogues about race, craft, literary politics and tradition fromcontemporary Black poets. The tenor of the book is deeply critical,ranging from exultations about being true to the self to poet WandaColeman's charge that "Black literary excellence is occludedby mediocrities." The book's contributors bemoan be��moan?tr.v. be��moaned, be��moan��ing, be��moans1. To express grief over; lament.2. To express disapproval of or regret for; deplore: what's left out of poemsbecause of the desire to be palatable, and the wrong-minded things putinto poems to "gain entry into the clique (mathematics) clique - A maximal totally connected subgraph. Given a graph with nodes N, a clique C is a subset of N where every node in C is directly connected to every other node in C (i.e. C is totally connected), and C contains all such nodes (C is maximal). ," in the words ofpoet Crystal Williams. As Major Jackson, an associate professor ofEnglish at the University of Vermont, warns in the book, "Theprison you construct around yourself in words will soon be yourreality." Appreciating the Craft Helping all students, regardless of race, to appreciate the craftis often a challenge. "It's the rare student who embraces the difficulties andrewards of poetry, and who can create the deep and original attentionthat line deserves," says Jackson. Ellis says his students' interests are sparked more bygenerational than racial factors. He teaches more White students thanBlack, but they're all coming from the same place: spoken word. Hisstudents are inspired by visually oriented performance poetry and musicvideos. "The performance on the page, between the reader and thepage, is much more subtle," he says. "[The interest] allsprung from hip-hop, because Def Jam began as a hip-hop recording labelbefore they decided to do the Def Poetry Jam and Comedy tour." Knowing the cultural background of his students helps Ellis developeffective teaching techniques. He simulates readings, uses videoperformances and asks the students what a particular poem would soundlike if Gertrude Stein, for example had two turntables behind her. Healso demands that his students translate poems. That could mean readinga poem by Robert Frost and rewriting it from their perspective. And heincorporates lots of memorization, a tool he learned from one of hismentors, Boston University's Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. ButEllis doesn't stop there. He's also known to utilizehigh-concept art and drawing in his courses. For example, he takesstudents to view specific artwork and asks them to think of a poem thatreminds them structurally of the painting. Ellis' work-in-progress, Colored Only: Identity Repair Poems,attempts to survey the tradition of literacy, Black writing and identitypolitics. The result: ironic poems about race. He says his work is aboutgetting America to see and hear all the language it can. What he wantsis a place in academia for "folk, which is class, and where slang,slanted language and aggressive behavior live." Part of that is about getting the language of poor people intoliterary English, he says, but also about incorporating Black style andbehavior. For example, Ellis explains that in 1980 people on the streetgreeted you with "what's up." In 1985, it became"sup." Now it's just a physical gesture, a head nod."Prosody prosody:see versification. prosodyStudy of the elements of language, especially metre, that contribute to rhythmic and acoustic effects in poetry. has to respect, reimagine and revisualize that," saysEllis. "My beef is about language--when poor people are cut out,language is amputated. I don't think America is seeing and hearingall the lives we can." Ellis' own poems are a mixture of formal and free--fromfragmented percussive per��cus��sive?adj.Of, relating to, or characterized by percussion.per��cussive��ly adv. phrasing to lyrical pentameter pentameter(pĕntăm`ətər)[Gr.,=measure of five], in prosody, a line to be scanned in five feet (see versification). The third line of Thomas Nashe's "Spring" is in pentameter: "Cold doth / not sting, / the pret / ty birds / do sing. that take its cuefrom Walcott's famously vivid, concise style. He's a Blackpoet, but he doesn't want to dance in Blackface. How much can hepush the academic envelope? As Ellis says in his poem, "Race ChangeOperation:" "I will be a White fiction full of Blackish progression/thefirst human bestseller, a Jigga Book Spook." Where Poets Can Be Poets * African American Review The African American Review is a quarterly journal and the official publication of the Division on Black American Literature and Culture of the Modern Language Association. (aar.slu.edu) Since 1967, then called Negro American Literature Forum, thisjournal has been giving young literary scholars a place to test andrefine their ideas. In 1992, they broadened their scope and beganpublishing poetry, fiction and other literary formats. Callaloo cal��la��loo?n.1. The edible spinachlike leaves of the dasheen.2. A soup or stew made of these leaves or other greens, okra, crabmeat, and seasonings. (callaloo.tamu.edu) This literary journal has been a breeding ground for newgenerations of writers since the late 1970s, always mingling the work ofemerging poets among the more established. It began running writingworkshops at HBCUs in 1997, and by 2001 had switched to more intenseresidential summer workshops. For two weeks, writers and teachers doreadings and teach craft at Texas A&M University, Callaloo founderDr. Charles H. Rowell's home institution. The next workshop isscheduled for June 2007. See Web site for more details. Cave Canem (www.cavecanempoets.org) A weeklong summer workshop-retreat held at the University ofPittsburgh at Greensburg University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg is a branch campus of the University of Pittsburgh which opened in 1963 and was granted degree-granting status in 1988. In 1999 Pitt-Greensburg opened the first of three academic villages (Behavioral Sciences, Natural Sciences, and . Founded by UP English professor Toi Derricotteand SUNY-Stony Brook English professor Cornelius Eady, theworkshop-retreat is "not to groom students or compete with theestablished Master's of Fine Arts programs, but to have a placewhere, for one week out of 52, you could focus on your work without thedistraction of being the only Black writer in the workshop." Gwendolyn Brooks Writers' Conference for Black Literature and Creative Writing (www.csu,edu/gwendolynbrooks)Chicago State University has hosted this conference for 16 years. Thisyear's conference, scheduled for Oct. 25-28, will include literaryawards, a workshop on writing children's literature and a hip-hoppoetry concert. * Not meant to be an exhaustive list. E-MAIL THE AUTHOR: dianemetha@yahoo.com