Contemporary poetry

PHILIP LEVINE /lívajn/ (1928) is known as the poet of the working class. His poems tell stories of blue collar workers, his own workingman’s life and address the common man in simple colloquial language. He knew the people of the Beat generation but had a voice of his own. As a child of Jewish immigrants, he experienced anti-Seminism in his childhood. He worked days at a factory and wrote poetry at night. He was appointed poet laureate.

His poems like in a collection What Work Is (1991) represent the views of an angry commoner who cannot influence anything, criticizing consumer-oriented American society.

Collection Not This Pig includes the poem Animals are Passing from Our Lives where the speaker is a pig who is being led to the marker. It contemplates itself with admiration, sense of dignity, senses heighted by fear, while fully knowing its fate. It proceeds without evasion, superior to its captor, a boy who will probably faint from the shock of the slaughter. It does not like watchers/consumers-buyer who come to the marker but are afraid to watch the slaughter fully as they “won’t meet their steady eyes for fear they could see.” The pig is being funny in its last moments, says it won’t scream before its death “like a new housewife discovering television,” it remains its pride till death.

STANLEY KUNITZ (1905-2006) was influenced by the British Metaphysical poets, William Blake and modernism. His first books of poems was barely recognised, real recognition came slowly to him but throughout the 70s he became one of the most distinctive voices in American poetry with the collection Passing Through (1995). He switched to autobiographical verse in confessional style, in the poem The Layers he writes “I have walker through many lives and I am not who I was though some principle of being from which I struggle not to stray.”

JEROME ROTHENBERG (*1931) was an experimental poet, a descendent of Polish-Jewish immigrants. He is noted for his work in the fields ethnopetics and coined deep image in poetry which is trying to use Indian oral tradition in a modern way. He is interested in so called sacred languages – a transformation of ordinary language in a language used in the context of religion and mysticism. His wrote a collection of poets and spiritual writings Technicians of the Sacred (1969).

MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980) was best known for her poems about equality and feminism. Her poem To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century on the theme of Judaism as a gift was so influential as it astonished her as she remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life. Another work The Poem as Mask is a self-criticism. When she almost died during childbirth, it opened her eyes and she realised that her previous life was a hypocritical mask. The myth blurred her sense of reality but she vows to wear masks no more, the final couples proves that she changed the myth to the one that truly comes within herself. Collection: The Speed of Darkness.

Afro-American poetry

Since 1970, there was an explosion of ethnic literature and the Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in giving voice to Afro-American writers whose work raised awareness of the culture of black people. The Black Arts Movement led by the Harlem-based activist Amiri Baraka was fuelled by the assassinations of the civil rights leaders Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King in 1968. The movement gave an example that people do not have to assimilate but remain their own culture and tradition.

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-2000) is an author of more than twenty books of poetry, including Children Coming Home (1991) and The Bean Eaters. She started writing at the age of thirteen and at seventeen started to submit her work. She wrote poems using blues rhythms in free verse and her characters were often from the poor.

In her poem The Lovers of the Poor she features rich ladies who feel sorrow for the poor but do not take any real action, making the title sarcastic. Ladies give money to the poor but do not get to know these people in need, thinking they are “too dirty or too dim.” Upon visiting the poor, these ladies cannot stand “the stench” and are afraid to catch diseases so they do not touch anything. Brooks tells that only giving money does not really help and actions of these ladies are hypocritical.

In My dreams, my works, must wait till after hell the narrator puts their dreams and work on holt and marking each to hold on until she can return to them after enduring therapeutic hell because it seems she has a serious illness. Because of this, she is hungry for pursing her dreams but doctors only tell her to wait so she maintains hope until these “devil days” are over. She hopes all that will not make her insensitive and she can returns to which she once was.

AMIRI BARAKA (1934-2014) was born LEROI JONES but became a Muslim, accepting a new name, since he considered Christian heritage to be imposed by the whites. He became publicly famous for his collection Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems (2003), other collection Slave Ship (1970). He was also a dramatist. His plays like The Slave reflect increasing hostility towards white society. Upon moving to Harlem, he founded a theatre company which produced anti-white plays intended for a black audience but it dissolved in a few months.

His poem Somebody Blew Up America is considered controversial, Baraka made public reading of it shortly after the incident of 9/11. He was accused of supporting terrorism became he blames Americans for causing it – growing these terrorists. He lists historical events in which whites were evil usurpers and gives even concrete names of people. Since he accuses also Jews who according to him knew about the terrorist act beforehand and were “filming the explosion” and Israeli workers “stayed home that day”, he was also accused of anti-Semitism but he lists also crimes against the Jews like Holocaust.

ETHERIDGE KNIGHT (1931-1991) dropped out of school at age of sixteen but mastered the art of the toast, a form of long improvised humorous poetry. He served in army but after his return, he fell into a drug addiction and was arrested for robbery. During his time in prison, he began writing poetry and published Poems from Prison (1968). The book was a success and Knight joined Black Arts Movement. More recent collection is Born of a Woman (1980).

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane features a black man Hard Rock who “known not to take not shit from nobody.” He is described as hero by other prisoners because he fights for his rights. However, for his violent behaviour, he is taken to the hospital where “the doctors had bored a hole in his head, cut out part of his brain.” After lobotomy, Hard Rock is not the same, he hardly pronounces his own name and has “eyes empty.” Other prisoners lie to themselves to maintain the legend of Hard Rock but they lost their hero and cowardly have “eyes on the ground.” But he made an example for them: “We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do.”

MICHAEL HARPER (*1938) recalls his family’s move in 1950s to a predominantly white Los Angeles neighbourhood with racial tension which was traumatic enough experience to make him a poet. He lived in segregated housing which run counter to the democratic principles and Harper calls it schizophrenia of the society that is involved in the very English language and the logic the society follows such as binary opposition as white and black.

Harper manipulated old European myths, creating new ones which is a technique he uses in Dear John Dear Coltrane (1970). John Coltrane is a talented jazz musician but a tragic figure and becomes a link between the personal and historical, pain and its expression. A lot of his poetry is influenced by jazz and history.

His poem American History recalls an ancient about girls who were killed at the church which reminds him of another bloody incident on the sea that was forgotten. Five hundred Afro-Americans died back there and the authorities did not even bother to look for them because nobody cared and later they were erased from history: “Can’t find what you can’t see, can you?”

MAYA ANGELOU (1928-2014) wrote poetry, autobiographies but was credited also with movies. She was a friend with James Baldwin and was very active in the Civil Rights Movement. She became famous for her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) that tells a story of her coming-of-age. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women and her work is labelled as autobiographical fiction. Collections of poetry: And Still I Rise (1978), Phenomenal Woman (1995).

The poem Caged Bird depicts a free bird that can float in the sky as it wishes and contrasts the image of freedom with a caged bird in a narrow cage whose wings are clipped so it "opens his throat to sing." It sings "of things unknown but longed for still...for the caged bird sings of freedom." When the free bird thinks of another breeze or worms, the caged bird "stands on the grave of dreams" so it can only sing of freedom. Angelou compares the caged bird to Afro-Americans.

The poem Still I Rise claims that the whites can "write down /the black people/ down in history with bitter twisted lies" but Afro-Americans "like dust" will still rise. She asks the whites: "Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Does my sexiness upset you?" Even if they meet with nothing but hatred, they will still rise.

Feminist poets

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979) like her mentor Marianne Moore never married. When she lost both parents she was moving from country to country, became addicted to alcohol and moved to Brazil to overcome her addiction and write poetry. She was apolitical, more conservative and critical of Confessional poetry as she could not understand why she should read about somebody's life in such a life. Her poetry contains almost no biographical reference since she wanted to keep her private life separate. She even became a poet laureate.

She was interested in remote landscapes and her poem At the Fishhouses is a description of ice-cold North-Atlantic. Collections: North & South (1946), A Cold Spring (1956).

Her most famous poem One Art is about “the art” of losing which “isn’t hard to master” because we “lose something everyday” like house keys or badly spent time. We lose something so often that we do not consider it to be a disaster anymore. However, losses mentioned grow more and more significant like places and named we cannot remember. The loss that really bothers is a loss of a beloved person which is also not hard to do but this one we really feel like a disaster, even though the speaker feebly tried to convince the reader otherwise. In this poem she was trying to deal with the human destiny of losing things, memories and the beloved people. However, it is only a distant reflection of her troubles and can be interpreted as a universal problem, not only her own (unlike Plath's highly personal poetry).

ADRIENNE RICH (1929-2012) was a poet and a feminist, called one of the most widely read and influential contemporary poet, credited for bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to poetic discourse. However, she was not a radical feminist as she was trying to find a balance between sexes as in her collection Dream of a Common Language (1978). She is criticising also patriarchal attitude to poetry.

CATHY SONG (*1955) is a female author of Chinese origin. She became famous for her collection Picture Bride (1983) and is associated with the Hawaii literary group Bamboo Ridge. In her poetry, she is examining Chinese-American identity, especially of the second and the third generation of immigrant.

Poem Heaven, is actually about her son's view, not hers. Her son is a dreamer, "he thinks when we die we'll go to China" since he admires his heritage, though only half Asian ("his blond hair belongs to his father"). The narrator, his mother, is amused by the notion: "think of it - a Chinese heaven." The son measures the distance on the map by his hand but it is about 800 miles from where they live now. The narrator herself has never been to America, she is already the second generation ("I've never seen it.") She ponders whether her ancestors had any idea they would stay for a life when they came to America to build the railroad ("he had never planned to stay, the boy who helped to build the railroads for a dollar a day...each mile of track led him further away"). The narrator wonders where her very American son found this longing for homeland, probably "it must be in the blood, this notion of returning." It did not happen to her, "it skipped two generations." Her son, the dreamer, can see the way to the Chinese heaven but not her.