Books by Eugene Redmond

Sides of the River (1969)  /  Sentry of the Four Golden Pillars (1970) / River of Bones and Flesh and Blood (1971) / Songs from an Afro/Phone (1972)

 In a Time of Rain & Desire (1973) / Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas (2003)

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Eugene B. Redmond. Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A Critical History .New York: Doubleday, 1976

The poetry of Black America is a strong and powerful force on the American literary scene. In Drumvoices, Eugene Redmond analyzes the works of such contemporary poets as June Jordan, Quincy Troupe, Jayne Cortez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Carolyn Rodgers, the esteemed Black poets of the Harlem Renaissance: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown; as well as the poetic expression of such popular lyricists/poets as Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and B.B. King.

Drumvoices offers a critical introduction to black poetry, including an outline of its historical development. Redmond, a poet and educator, discusses trends within the Black literary movement and the social milieu of the major periods. This exceptional work thoroughly explores the dynamics of Black poetic expression through a detailed examination of the meaning and form of songs, sayings, and poems

—Backcover Drumvoices

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Conclusion: Afterthoughts

As promised in our Preface, we have tried to avoid forcing our research and findings into manicured paradigms and neat frames. However, Drumvoices does advance theories and theses—many of them well known and some of them original—for this study has been termed a critical history; and one must take stands. Indeed, the poets have taken their own stands as individuals and groups, since to project an inner self to the public is to assume a stance; to work out one's systems of beliefs, perceptions, relationships, and values within the function or framework of poetry and poetics. Such stands have always represented critical choices for poets. And for Afro-American poets they have created a unique crisis-continuum in that so many "unusual" factors attend their written "commitments." One factor was the apparent self-mockery that initially accompanied the poets use of written English. for the early bards, there was the simple—but grave—task of "proving" their ability to employ literary skills; this test, alas, was conducted by "liberal" slavemasters, while many states made black literacy a crime punishable by imprisonment, beating and, in some cases, even death.

There was much confusion and misdirection of values and energies in the earlier poetry: the poets were neither encouraged nor allowed to retain an African flavor (let alone language). The Christianization of slaves had aided in the development of a ghastly  "duality"—or wall between the African and himself—which cluttered the poets' self-esteem and world-views, indeed sending most black intellectuals into psychic chaos. This tendency, called a "veil" by W. E. B. Du Bois, held Afro-American poetry in a state of moral limbo up through the beginning of the twentieth century. And though there wee exceptions (Horton, Whitfield, Whitman, Frances Harper), anyone with proper background study can understand the isolationism and alienation of a Phillis Wheatley or a Jupiter Hammon, who refused freedom for himself but advocated it for young Blacks. One need only read David Walker to discover the boundaries of Negro "freedom" in the "free" states of early America.

In the meantime, a folk tradition—on the plantations, among escaped slaves, out of the minstrel era—was also developing. This folk strain in the poetry (separated by Wagner from the "spiritualist" vein) has survived as a conscience, more or less, of Afro-American letters, philosophy, and art. And even though such critics as Wagner make false distinctions between the folk and the literary (or spiritual) realms, all but a few of the "intellectual" poets have delved into the folk roots and origins in one way or another. This fact is not as obvious in such poets as Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, or Jean Toomer as it is in, say, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes—but it can be identified. At the same time, however, the ambivalent attitude toward the Christian God and white people is as evident in the folk poets as it is in those steeped in book theology.

Examinations of the artificial boundaries established between folk (oral, gesture) poetry and literary (intellectual, book) poetry has not been pursued with enough intensity by critics and writers. Just because Europe and larger America have depreciated communal art forms does not mean that Afro-American has to follow suit! Or does it? And, as we stated in the beginning of Chapter VI, the social-communal value of the poetry has yet to be viewed in the context of black reading trends and habits. For we know Black place great emphasis on the dramatic presentation of a poem. Witness the magnetism and charisma of poets at live readings and the development of a national black audience for poetry via such vehicles as Ellis Haizlip's TV show "Soul."

All the foregoing statements tie in with our opening remarks about stands taken by poets. For, if the transliteration, if you will, of the thought or impulse to the page results in a reduction of poetic intensity, then the silent reading of the poem cuts a similar nerve contact between reader and the originating idea or instinct. One has only to hear such an "intellectual" poet as Robert Haydn read his own works to understand this principle. Our point, then, is that much of the strait-laced poetry of the early periods has less meaning for us when it is not delivered in its natural environments of church services, abolitionist rallies, choir-singing, dances or social activities. For example, one should avoid listening to a poor reader present dialect poems of Dunbar, or Corrothers.

A number of devices and themes are central to Afro-American poetry. And while there have been instances (Wheatley, Hammon, Ann Plato, the Creole poets) of poets' being immune to the social whirlwind, most Afro-American poets have been in that whirlwind. Hence, patterns of segregation in America turned a "curse" into a "blessing" (to paraphrase Alain Locke) and provided black poets with private languages, forms, styles, and tones. from the ditties, blues, spirituals, dozens, sermons, and jokes, the poets fashioned an endless stream of poetic forms and fusions (Tolson dressed the Pindaric ode in a blues form). And that same, segregated pattern gave these poets their ominous themes and their grave tones and temperaments, which, coupled with their crisp insight into America's contradictions and paradoxes, allowed them to project, to prophesy, and to refine their "duality" into one of the most powerful aesthetical tools available to any group of writers.

Hence the Afro-American poet has his own private (cultural) symbols and themes as well as those of the larger world. For example, most black poets have written poems about lynching, but most Euro-Americans poets have not. themes related to slavery, job discrimination, the ambivalence of a Christian God, psychic tumult in a white world, homelessness and restlessness, poverty reinforced by oppression, racism, prejudice, rivers and trains, castration, plus the landscape of terror and fear resulting from a web of social inequities, all, in one way or another, work themselves into Afro-American poetry.

Though certain forms and themes have historically dominated Afro-American poetry, unique variations and divergent approaches characterize the use of them. Outside of the dominating clusters, however, the poets display myriad other interests, themes and preoccupations. many of these trends stem from black family units that have existed for hundreds of years—even if such a fact is obscured by a socio-media representation with all its accompanying pathological emphases. (Any young Black's critical analysis of white culture includes his own unstated or implied cultural preferences.)

True, Africans in the new land have lived the nightmare amid talk of an American Dream; and, understandably, the darker poets' songs are full of unpleasantries and recollections of that nightmare. But the end of black poetry can never be self-pity, chauvinism, ideology, rhetoric, or complaint (Baraka says, "The End of Man Is His Beauty"). Thus Margaret walker, amid her sisters' use of "safe" female subjects and her brothers' trips to the altar of the white literati, is able to celebrate black life (For My People).

Robert Haydn transcends artificial barriers between himself (and us) and nature and enters the flower (Night-Blooming Cereus), as does Henry Dumas in Play Ebony Play Ivory and Pinkie Gordon Lane in Wind Thoughts. Other examples of such diversity and sensitivity abound: Owen Dodson (Powerful Long Ladder), Langston Hughes (The Dream Keeper), Alice Walker (Once), Raymond Patterson (26 Ways of Looking at a Black Man), Joyce Carol Thomas (Blessing), and the cross-spread of almost any anthology.

We have said the poet takes a stand not inherent in, say, the musician's, when he commits his thoughts to paper. And over the past few years of social change and unrest, the black poet whose aesthetic or religious position was not aligned with that of vested interest groups came up before many a strange court, at which times his own feelings and sensibilities were often neutralized in favor of the "popular latex brand." Serious critics and 'cultural stabilizers" need to examine such "one-way approaches to poetry/criticism, especially as they have occurred over the past ten years. We mention this "side" show of the contemporary poetry scene because its presence has often dirtied the waters of "open" thought and either crippled or destroyed many a budding talent. In a  few cases it has even muffled a rich or significant voice. However, it is time the critical flood gates were "opened" completely and  honestly. Only in this way can Afro-American poetry continue to breathe the breath of the ancestors.

Finally, as winds of change shift, speed up, or slow down, and the "tradition" congeals, readers and poets must ask about ultimate designs and inherent missions. As the drum stands at the crossroads of traditional African and Afro-American culture, so the poet should stand at the center of the drum. Most poetic principles, and the language associated with them, rely on the vocabulary of sound and music. Music is the most shared experience—the most vital commodity—among Afro-Americans. And poetry is music's twin. Both the metaphysical and the metaphorical word stem from and return in measured rumble or anxious cacophony. Between the lines are the rattle of choruses, the whine (hum) of guitars, and the shriek of tambourines, framed by rivers that will not run away. And the drumvoices urging us to cross them, cross them.

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Contents

Source: Eugene B. Redmond. Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry, A Critical History New York: Doubleday, 1976

posted 26 January 2007

Eugene B. Redmond / Office: PH 2206 / Phone: x3991 / Email: eredmon@siue.edu

M.A. Washington University / Editor: DRUMVOICES REVUE

Specializations: Creative Writing, African-American and Multi-Cultural Literature.

Currently a Professor of English and the editor of DRUMVOICES REVUE at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Eugene B. Redmond is an active voice in the local writing community as well as in national and international circles.