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The second volume of "The Voice of the Negro", was published in January 1905. This volume is split up into different numbers going all the way to Number 12. This is released on a monthly basis and is shown next to the title of the Journal.
The credited editors on this Volume Two No. 1 are Benjamin Brawley, Corporal Simmons, Mary Terrell, Bishop Warren Candler, Rev. Dr. Bradley, William Ward, W. E. B. DuBois, Kelly Miller, W.H. Council, Dr. Landrum, James Corrothers, Gardner Goldsby, Alice Ward Smith, and Silas Floyd.
"The Voice of the Negro" first opens with a Monthly Review, which would consist of events that are happening within that year and some insight as to some congressional decisions that had occurred within that year. This journal also includes pieces that are written by the editors discussing a variety of topics. These topics consist of some valuable insight into some of the actions that affect Black people, such as a paper written by Bishop Candler who wrote on the subject of Hostility to lynching. The journal also consists of short stories one of them written by James Corrothers, the title of the short story is "Lincoln".
The credited editors in Vol. Two No. 2 were Gardner Goldsby, Pauline E. Hopkins, Wellington Adams, Mrs. Mary Church Terrell, Daniel Murray, John Henery Adams, and newer material from W.E.B DuBois, Silas X. Floyd, and W. S. Scarborough.
The third volume of The Voice of the Negro, was published in January 1906. This volume continued the same structure as the previous volumes by releasing twelve different installments corresponding to the year's months.
Vol. 3 No. 1 had contributions from Asa Thombson, William Pickens, T.H. Malone, J.W.E. Bowen, G.A. Lee, W.E.B. DuBois, Mrs. L.K. Wiggins, and Benjamin G. Brawley
Vol. 3 No. 2 had contributions from Alice Ward Smith, Mary White Ovington, J.H. Gray, T.H. Malone, John Henry Adams, Florence Bentley, Daniel Murray, M.A. Majors, Joseph Manning, William Maxwell, John Jenifer, and Silas Floyd
Vol. 3 No. 3 had contributions from Azalia Marlen, Henry Proctor, James Corrothers, Daniel Murray, Will Hendrickson, W.E.B. DuBois, T. THomas Fortune, Lida Wiggins, S.H. Archer, C.C. Poindexter, Anna Comstock, Fanny Williams, and Henery Middleton
The fourth volume of The Voice of the Negro, was published in January 1907. This volume continued the same structure as the previous volumes by releasing twelve different installments corresponding to the year's months. This was the last volume produced by The Voice of the Negro.
The first issue of vol. Four was a conjoined issue with content from January and February of 1907, this issue had contributions from J. Francis Lee, Jasper Phillips, John Daniels, Alexnder Chamberlain, W.S. Scarboroguh, Joseph B. Foraker, Lena Lewis, Russell Fleming, Azalia Martin, John Fraser, Daniel Thompson, John Work, Katherine Tillman, Vere Goldthwaite, William Pickens, Florence Bentley, Fiona Macleod, Jack Thorne, and Silas X. Floyd
The second issue of vol. Four was released in March of 1907 and consisted of contributions from Chas Mayberry, A.D. Delaney, Edward E. Wilson, Will H. Hendrickson, Alexander F. Chamberlain, W.E.B DuBois, W.S. Scarborough, J.E. Bruce, Florence Bentley, William Pickens, John Henery Adams, Mary Church Terrell, Florence Lewis Bentley, William Braithwaite, J.A.G. Luvall, Silas X. Floyd and Mrs. Bettie G. Francis
"Praise Song for the Day" is an occasional poem written by the American poet Elizabeth Alexander and delivered at the 2009 presidential inauguration of President Barack Obama. The poem is the fourth to be delivered at a United States presidential inauguration, following in the tradition of recitals by Robert Frost (John F. Kennedy, 1961), Maya Angelou (Bill Clinton, 1993), and Miller Williams (Bill Clinton, 1997).
It consists of fourteen unrhymed three-line stanzas (tercets) and a one-line coda. Delivered directly after Obama's inaugural address, it received a lukewarm response and was criticized as "too prosaic." Graywolf Press published the poem in paperback 6 February 2009, with a first printing of 100,000 copies.
Adam Kirsch called the poem "bureaucratic verse."
"Ballad of Birmingham" is a poem by Dudley Randall, that he published as a broadside in 1965. It was written in response to the 1963 bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The poem was set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1967 after he read it in a newspaper, and features on his album "Life is a Constant Journey Home".
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is a poem by American writer Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote the poem when he was seventeen and crossing the Mississippi River on the way to visit his father in Mexico. It was first published the following year in "The Crisis", starting Hughes's literary career. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" uses rivers as a metaphor for Hughes's life and the broader African-American experience. It has been reprinted often and is considered one of Hughes's most famous and signature works.
Langston Hughes was born in 1902, in Missouri. He attended high school in Cleveland, Ohio, where he first began writing. He graduated from Central High School in 1917. Several years after graduating high school, Hughes decided to travel to Mexico City and live with his father, whom he did not know well. He left in 1920.
I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.</poem>
Twenty years after its publication, Hughes suggested the poem be turned into a Hollywood film, but the project never went forward.
"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" is one of Hughes's earliest poems and is considered to mark the beginning of his career as a poet. Sandra Merriweather in the "Encyclopedia of American Poetry" considered the poem to be one of Hughes's best works, and it has been described as his "signature" poem. However, it has also been described as one of his "most uncharacteristic poems". The work is one of his most famous poems. The professor Ira Dworkin described the poem as "an iconic representative of Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance." Upon publication, it "delighted black traditionalists", who appreciated the poem's message. Hughes's poems "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", "Mother to Son", and "Harlem" were described in the "Encyclopedia of African-American Writing" as "anthems of black America".
Hughes wrote the poem while the Great Migration, a movement of African Americans out of the Southern United States and into Northern cities like Chicago, was ongoing. William Hogan, a scholar, places Hughes's poem in the context of this vast uprooting of population, noting that it "recognizes the need for a new kind of rootedness, one that embraced a history of migration and resettlement. Hogan argues that by connecting "communities of color across both space and time", Hughes is developing "a theory of racial community" which draws strength from migration and change. The "many 'routes' historically taken by black culture only strengthen the 'roots' of the community".
The scholar Allan Burns feels that the poem is written from the perspective of a "'soul' or 'consciousness' of black people in general" rather than Hughes himself. Burns also notes the progression of rivers through the poem from the Euphrates to the Mississippi follows a chronology of history "from the Garden of Eden [. . .] to modern America." By describing the "muddy bosom" of the river turning "golden in the sunset", Hughes provides a note of hope that Burns equates to the phrase "per aspera ad astra" (through suffering to the stars). Hughes himself had not traveled widely when he wrote the poem.
In his early writing, including "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", Hughes was inspired by American poet Carl Sandburg. Rachel Blau DuPlessis argues that part of the poem reinterprets Vachel Lindsay's "The Congo", by portraying the Congo River as "a pastoral nourishing, maternal setting." Hughes references the spiritual "Deep River" in the line "My soul has grown deep like the rivers." The poem was also influenced by Walt Whitman.
The poem has been cited as becoming "the voice of the Association [NAACP] itself," along with "Song of the Son" by Jean Toomer and editorials that Du Bois wrote. One of Hughes's most reprinted works, the poem had been reprinted at least eleven times within ten years of publication, including in the 1925 anthology "The New Negro," the 1927 work "Caroling Dusk," and Hughes's own "The Dream Keeper" in 1932.
After Hughes died on May 22, 1967, his ashes were interred in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem under a cosmogram that was inspired by "The Negro Speaks of Rivers". The cosmogram is entitled "Rivers" and was designed by "Houston Conwill". In the center of the cosmogram is the line: "My soul has grown deep like the rivers".
Pearl Primus, a dance choreographer, developed a work based on the poem.
Keeping the Night Watch is a children's poetry book written by Hope Anita Smith and illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Published by Square Fish Books as the sequel to Smith's "The Way a Door Closes", it was a Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and appeared on several best children's book lists in 2009.
The book is a series of poems from the perspective of thirteen-year-old C.J. Washington III, the narrator from Smith's 2003 poetry book "The Way a Door Closes." While the prequel captures the experiences and emotions of a family abandoned by their father, "Keeping the Night Watch" explores C.J.'s subsequent struggles with the unexpected return of his father and expands on intersecting issues of adolescence, poverty, and urban life.
"The Weary Blues" is a poem by American poet Langston Hughes.
Written in 1925, "The Weary Blues" was first published in the Urban League magazine, "". It was awarded the magazine's prize for best poem of the year. The poem was included in Hughes's first book, a collection of poems, also entitled "The Weary Blues". (Four poems from the book, although not the title poem, inspired the musical settings "Four Songs from The Weary Blues" by Florence Price).
Langston Hughes was known as one of the most prominent and influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, a rebirth movement of African Americans in the arts during the 1920s. He wrote about the world around him, giving a voice to African Americans during a time of segregation. Hughes was both a contributor and supporter of his fellow African-American writers. Collectively, they changed the way the world viewed African Americans because of their talents and ability to capture real life and turn it into art.
Hughes wrote of inequality ("I, Too”), of resilience ("Mother to Son" and "The Negro Speaks of Rivers"), of pride ("My People"), of hope ("Freedom's Plow"), and of music ("The Trumpet Player" and "Juke Box Love Song"). He was the author of several novels, a memoir, song lyrics, children's books, plays, countless songs and more than 20 books.
"The Weary Blues" takes place at an old Harlem bar on Lenox Avenue. There is a piano player playing the blues. As he plays, the speaker observes his body movement and the tone of his voice. Throughout the poem, several literary devices are used to guide the reader through the mixture of emotions the blues player is feeling. The vivid imagery and use of language gives the reader a more personal glimpse into the life of the man playing the blues.
The music in “The Weary Blues” is a metaphor for life as a black man. The color in the poem is symbolic of the black struggle. It starts with slave spirituals in which “slaves calculatingly created songs of double-entendre as an intellectual strategy” as Hughes does in his poem. When he says, “I heard a Negro play” he is making the musician decidedly black. The lines “with his ebony hands on each ivory key / He made that poor piano moan with melody” continues the reference to color, and decidedly differentiates black from white. Hughes personifies the piano with a humanly moan, but the moan also indicates his abuse of the “ivory key” and the “melancholy tone” of the music.
However, the poem is a celebration of blues. In lines eleven, fourteen and sixteen there are apostrophes to the blues. “O Blues!” and “Sweet Blues” are the speaker's exclamations of delight. He just cannot contain himself when it comes to the blues. He even notices the musician enjoying the music and adds the onomatopoeia of a “thump, thump, thump.” The Weary Blues is an enjoyable poem and song, yet its message is one of sadness.
"The Weary Blues" is one of Hughes's most famous poems. Critics have claimed that the poem is a combination of blues and jazz with personal experiences. It embodies blues as a metaphor and form. It has also been coined as one of the first works of blues performance in literature. Throughout the poem, music is seen as not only a form of art and entertainment, but also as a way of life: people living the blues. Hughes's ability to incorporate poetry with music and history with art has given him the reputation as one of the leading black artists of the 20th century. "The Weary Blues" allows the reader to seek to unlock the mystery of the blues, for both the musician and themselves.
Langston Hughes slow jams "The Weary Blues" (1925) to jazz accompaniment with the Doug Parker Band on the CBUT (CBC Vancouver) program "The 7 O'Clock Show" in 1958. Host, Bob Quintrell introduces the performance.
"If We Must Die" is a poem by Claude McKay published in the July 1919 issue of "The Liberator". McKay wrote the poem as a response to mob attacks by white Americans upon African-American communities during Red Summer. The poem does not specifically reference any group of people, and has been used to represent many groups who are persecuted. It is considered one of McKay's most famous poems and was described by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks as one of the most famous poems of all time.
During the Red Summer, from late summer to early autumn 1919, there was a wave of anti-black attacksat least twenty-five major "mob actions". In the attacks, hundreds of people were killed and thousands more were injured. James Weldon Johnson coined the term "Red Summer" to refer the period. Claude McKay was born in Jamaica in 1889. He moved to the United States in 1912 and after attending several schools settled in New York City. He began to publish more poetry pseudonymously (having first published several collections in Jamaica). McKay's poetry was generally well received, particularly "To the White Fiends”. Shortly after moving to New York, he met Max Eastman, the publisher of "The Liberator." The two became friends.
McKay experienced the Red Summer personally, seeing violent mobs of white people while he worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He wrote "If We Must Die" in response to the events. The sonnet was first published in the July 1919 issue of "The Liberator".
Frank Harris had sought to convince McKay to publish the poem in his "Pearson's Magazine" and was angry when it was not, telling McKay "It belongs to me ... I gave you the inspiration to write that sonnet and I want to have the credit of publishing it." The poem was reprinted in "The Messenger" and the "Workers' Dreadnought" (London) later that year. It was widely reprinted in the years that followed.
Tonya Foster wrote that McKay's poem turned those who were persecuted into heroes and described it as a "call to arms for workers". By using "we" repeatedly, McKay extends his poem to whoever the poem reaches. It is a nonspecific poemthere are no phrases tying it to a specific group or raceand can apply to any group under attack by "monsters we defy."
McKay wrote the poem as a Shakespearean sonnet, using a 'ababcdcdefef' rhyming pattern across three quatrains and ending with a "perfectly rhymed" couplet. The poem begins with eight lines written as conditional sentences (if/then) centered around "the inevitable death" of the subject. The next six lines are a separate section. By having three lines that are broken without any punctuation (three, six, and seven), McKay creates a sense of "immediacy, urgency." The sestet, or final six lines, provides a calmer and "controlled" resolution each line ends with punctuation. The final line of the poem has two caesuras, or breaks in the phrase.
The scholar Robert A. Lee provided a close reading of the poem in "CLA Journal". He noted that "If We Must Die" is structured to develop with imagery. It begins the subject being described as "hogs" who are "hunted" and "penned" by "animals". In the second quatrain, the animals have become "monsters" and the hogs are humanized with "precious" blood and the ability to "defy" the monsters. Here, instead of the hogs being penned, the monsters have been "constrained". In the third, the hogs have developed to "kinsmen" while the dogs are "common". The poem ends with a couplet where the subject is "men" and the monsters are a "murderous, cowardly pack". Those who are oppressed continue to fight although they realize they "must die".
The poem was recited in the film "August 28: A Day in the Life of a People", which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. Eric Robert Taylor wrote a book about insurrections during the Atlantic slave trade and titled it "If We Must Die" after the poem.
"Let America Be America Again" is a poem written in 1935 by American poet Langston Hughes. It was originally published in the July 1936 issue of "Esquire Magazine". The poem was republished in the 1937 issue of "Kansas Magazine" and was revised and included in a small collection of Langston Hughes poems entitled "A New Song", published by the International Workers Order in 1938.
The poem speaks of the American dream that never existed for the lower-class American and the freedom and equality that every immigrant hoped for but never received. In his poem, Hughes represents not only African Americans, but other economically disadvantaged and minority groups as well. Besides criticizing the unfair life in America, the poem conveys a sense of hope that the American Dream is soon to come.
The title of this poem was used by Democratic United States senator John Kerry as a campaign slogan in his 2004 presidential campaign.
Afro-Surrealism or Afrosurrealism is a literary and cultural aesthetic. In 1974, Amiri Baraka used the term to describe the work of Henry Dumas. D. Scot Miller in 2009 wrote his famous "Afrosurreal Manifesto" in which he says, "Afro-Surrealism sees that all 'others' who create from their actual, lived experience are surrealist..." The manifesto delineates Afro-Surrealism from Surrealism and Afro-Futurism. The manifesto lists ten tenets that Afro-Surrealism follows including how "Afro-Surrealists restore the cult of the past," and how "Afro-Surreal presupposes that beyond this visible world, there is an invisible world striving to manifest, and it is our job to uncover it."
Afro-Surrealism, in its origins and its ethos as a movement, is global and diasporic. It is practiced and embodied in music, photography, film, the visual arts and poetry. Notable practitioners of Afro-Surrealism include Ted Joans, Bob Kaufman, Krista Franklin, Aimé Césaire, Suzanne Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, René Ménil, Kool Keith, Terence Nance, Will Alexander, India Sky Davis, Yetunde Olagbaju, Kara Walker, Samuel R. Delany,Starr Finch, Romare Bearden, Christopher Burch,
The AfroSurreal arts movement came about after D. Scot Miller penned "The Afrosurreal Manifesto" for The San Francisco Bay Guardian in May, 2009. Until that time, the term "Afrosurreal Expressionism" was used solely by Amiri Baraka to describe the writings of Henry Dumas. Later that year, Miller spoke with Baraka about extending the term by shortening the description. It was agreed by the two of them that "Afrosurreal" without the "expressionism" would allow further exploration of the term. Afrosurrealism may have some similar origins to surrealism in the mid-1920s, in that an aspect of it [Negritude] came after André Breton wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, but as Leopold Senghor points out in Miller's manifesto, “European Surrealism is empirical. African Surrealism is mystical and metaphorical.”.
Afro-Surrealism incorporates aspects of the Harlem Renaissance, Négritude and Black Radical Imagination as described by Professor Robin DG Kelley in his definitive work Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2003), and further with his Afrosurreal historical anthology, "Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora" (2009). Aspects of Afro-Surrealism can be traced to Martiniquan Suzanne Césaire’s discussion of the “revolutionary impetus of surrealism” in the 1940s.
Though much has been written and said about artist/activist/statesmen Aimé Césaire, much more needs to written about his partner Suzanne, a surrealist thinker and an important figure in the history of the Afrosurreal aesthetic . Her quest for “The Marvelous” over the “miserablism” expressed in the usual arts of protest inspired the Tropiques surrealist group, and especially René Ménil.
“The true task of mankind consists solely in the attempt to bring the marvelous into real life,” Ménil says in “Introduction to the Marvelous,”[1930s] “so that life can become more encompassing. So long as the mythic imagination is not able to overcome each and every boring mediocrity, human life will amount to nothing but useless, dull experiences, just killing time, as they say.”
Suzanne Césaire’s proclamation, “Be in permanent readiness for The Marvelous,” quickly became a credo of the movement; the word “marvelous” has since become re-contextualized with regard to contemporary black arts and interventions.
In his 1956 essay for "Présence Africaine," Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis wrote:" "What, then, is the Marvellous, except the imagery in which a people wraps its experience, reflects its conception of the world and of life, its faith, its hope, its confidence in man, in a great justice, and the explanation which it finds for the forces antagonistic to progress?"" In his work, Alexis is seen to have an acute sense of reality that is not unlike that of traditional surrealism, and his coining of the term "Marvelous Realism" reflects his influence by the earlier works of the Negritude/Black Surrealist Movement.
The term "Afro-Surrealism" was coined by Amiri Baraka in his 1974 essay on Black Arts Movement avant-garde writer Henry Dumas. Baraka notes that Dumas is able to write about ancient mysteries that were simultaneously relevant to the present day. The idea that the past resurfaces to haunt the present day is crucial to Afro-Surrealism.
Unlike Afro-Futurism which speculates on possibilities in the future, Afrosurrealism, as Miller describes, is about the present. "Rather than speculate on the coming of the four horseman, Afrosurrealists understand that they rode through too long ago. Through Afrosurrealism, artists expose this form of the future past that is right now."
Much of Afro-Surrealism is concerned with the everyday life because it is said that there is nothing more surreal than the Black experience. According to Terri Francis, "Afrosurrealism is art with skin on it where the texture of the object tells its story, how it weathered burial below consciousness, and how it emerged somewhat mysteriously from oceans of forgotten memories and discarded keepsakes. This photograph figures Afrosurrealism as bluesy, kinky-spooky."
In the manifesto from which present day Afrosurrealism is based, writer D. Scot Miller states in a response to Afrofuturism:
"Afro-Futurism is a diaspora intellectual and artistic movement that turns to science, technology, and science fiction to speculate on black possibilities in the future. Afro-Surrealism is about the present. There is no need for tomorrow’s-tongue speculation about the future. Concentration camps, bombed-out cities, famines, and enforced sterilization have already happened. To the Afro-Surrealist, the Tasers are here. The Four Horsemen rode through too long ago to recall. What is the future? The future has been around so long it is now the past."
As The AfroSurreal Manifesto and Afrofuturism come to the fore in artistic, commercial and academic circles, the struggle between the specific and “the scent” of present-day manifestations of Black absurdity has come with it, posing interesting challenges to both movements. For Afrofuturists, this challenge has been met by inserting Afrocentric elements into its growing pantheon, the intention being to centralize Afrofuturist focus back on the continent of Africa to enhance its specificity. For the Afrosurrealists, the focus has been set at the “here and now” of contemporary Black arts and situations in the Americas, Antilles, and beyond, searching for the nuanced “scent” of those current manifestations.
"Zong!," M. NourbSe Philip and Setaey Adamu Boateng.
nappy edges is a collection of poetry and prose poetry written by Ntozake Shange and first published by St. Martin's Press in 1978. The poems, which vary in voice and style, explore themes of love, racism, sexism, and loneliness. Shange's third book of poetry, "nappy edges," was met with positive reviews and praise from critics, like Holly Prado of the "Los Angeles Times" who said of it that "this collection of poems, prose poems and poetic essays merges personal passion and heightened language."
The collection is divided into five sections of poetry and prose. The first section, "things i wd say", contains an opening essay on the nature of poetry called "takin a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative", and is followed by four more sections: "love & other highways", "closets", "& she bleeds", and "whispers with the unicorn". Although each section of the volume is distinct, the poems are all in conversation with each other and cover similar themes.
The subtitle of the collection is "the roots of your hair/what turns back when we sweat, run, make love, dance, get afraid, get happy: the tell-tale sign of living." The salient themes of the various writings within "nappy edges" all can be tied back to the multifaceted existence and complicated identities of black women. Like her plays, novels, and choreopoems, Shange's poems are as humorous as they are tragic, and explore a variety of themes.
Many of Shange's poems are about poetry itself—what it means to write it and what it means to read it. In "takin a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative", she implores black writers to cultivate the kinds of distinctive and original voices that we appreciate and expect from black musicians. Her fear is that black voices will fade into indistinction, and eventually their voices won't be recognizable at all.
In "inquiry", Shange explains the importance that poems elicit a visceral reaction out of the reader in the same way that a kiss or cold water would. Following this expectation, Shange focusses some of her poems on the responsibility of the poet to the reader. Generally speaking, the poet is expected to speak on behalf of communities, and to transport the reader to places they've never even been, but Shange emphasizes the necessity of the poet showing you what they know personally. By placing importance on the personal rather than the universal, Shange is able to explore the interiority of her personas' minds.
Shange also looks at what it means to be a black woman poet when the world of poetry is dominated by white men. Particularly during this historical moment in the late 1970s, not long after the Black Arts Movement which was a very male-dominated and patriarchal movement, Shange's position as a black woman poet is groundbreaking. She challenges the idea that words and poetry belong to men, and points to how unfair it is that when a woman does something, an 'ess' is added to the title (as in "poetess").
Stories of love and relationships can be found in each section of "nappy edges". Shange explores how traditional gender dynamics can mistreat women. From manipulative men who take advantage of women sexually, to women who stand up for themselves, each poem tells a different story. Shange explores love and relationships as spaces where women should be able to seek their own pleasure, sexual or otherwise. By showing how sex and love can either torment or uplift women, Shange is able to
Although the women in Shange's poems are self-sufficient, there is still an overarching theme of loneliness throughout "nappy edges". Rather than dwelling on this loneliness, Shange focusses on the theme of self-care as a woman and as a poet. It is clear from these poems that being a woman and being a poet in a patriarchal society is not easy, but Shange relies on herself and her creativity for survival. This self-care takes different forms, from talking to herself to writing poetry, but she insists that black women in particular take care of themselves, and claims that this is both a personal and political struggle.
Shange is also incredibly influenced by music, particularly Jazz and Blues artists. Her poems are lyrical and sometimes reminiscent of the style of improvisation in jazz. "i live in music", for instance, is explicitly about Shange's love of music, and doesn't stick to a particular rhythm or meter (like most of her poems). Shange recorded a version of "i live in music" accompanied by the William Goffigan Ensemble, which demonstrates both the connection between her poems and music, and her poetry's innate musicality.
"Note on Commercial Theatre" is a poem by Langston Hughes written in 1940 and republished in 2008.
Langston Hughes was a prominent writer during the Harlem Renaissance, which is obvious in most of his poetry. Hughes writes about the issues of the day, and "Note on Commercial Theatre" is no different.
During the Harlem Renaissance, one of the main controversies was that African American culture became the "vogue" of the day. This included interest not only in black writing and art, but in the rising jazz and theatre scenes as well. Harlem became the hot spot for this new black culture; both black and whites explored and became immersed in it. Because it was so popular, many white people attempted to infuse their own art with the new African American styles, resulting in hybrid music and theatre (for example, a swing version of "The Mikado", a comic opera).
Hughes was a huge proponent of creating a separate black identity and art, hence the extreme antipathy within "Note on Commercial Theatre" to black culture being absorbed by whites. This is reflected in his use of an experimental form for his poem; there is a lack of rhyme scheme and no discernible rhythm to the lines. Other black writers of the time, such as Countee Cullen, experimented within specific forms, but Hughes rejects form in this poem; he rejects the absorption into any other style but his own.
This vogue of African American culture became a controversy because not only was it becoming meshed with white culture in a time when the Pan-African movement was strong and blacks were trying to create a separate identity, but "Note on Commercial Theatre" also shows an anxiety over the dependence of black culture on white patronage. It was hard for African Americans to become published or find an audience outside of Harlem without going through white publishing houses. The final lines of the poem reflect the idea that for a truly African American culture to persist, it would have to be founded from within its own community:
"Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria" is a two-page poem by Langston Hughes, accompanied by illustrations by Walter Steinhilber, which takes the form of a parody of a magazine advertisement. The poem was first published in "The New Masses" in December 1931 and later in Hughes's autobiography of that time period, "The Big Sea". The poem is considered one of Hughes' most direct indictments of economic inequality of the 1930s.
The poem was composed in response to a multi-page advertisement for the new $28 million hotel Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York. The Great Depression had begun to hit New Yorkers and disproportionately affected minorities in the city. The disparity between the rich and poor was widening at the onset of the Depression and Jim Crow laws furthered that economic hardship along racial lines. Hughes said of the poem:
"The hotel opened at the very time when people were sleeping on newspapers in doorways, because they had no place to go. But suites in the Waldorf ran into thousands a year, and dinner in the Sert Room was ten dollars! (Negroes, even if they had the money, couldn't eat there. So naturally, I didn't care much for the Waldorf-Astoria.)"
The poem is viewed as a response to the economic milieu as well as cultural, racial, and class issues. "Advertisement for the Waldorf Astoria" is frequently grouped together with Hughes's other radical leftist writings of the 1930s. When Hughes first submitted his manuscript for "The Big Sea", Carl Van Vechten found that "Advertisement for the Waldorf-Astoria" was "bad economics and bad poetry" but he nonetheless encouraged its inclusion in the collection stating that it was a part of Hughes's "essential history".
When it was published in "The Big Sea" in 1940 Richard Wright wrote of the poem that it exemplified the toughness of Hughes that he could approach even the solidarity he feels with the working class with "humor, urbanity, and objectivity".
Dancing the Dream is a 1992 book of poems and reflections written by the American recording artist Michael Jackson. His second book, it followed his 1988 autobiography "Moonwalk". "Dancing the Dream" was dedicated to his mother, Katherine, and Deepak Chopra. Its foreword was written by Jackson's friend, the actress Elizabeth Taylor. The book also contains an assortment of around 100 photographs of Jackson.
"Dancing the Dream" was published by Doubleday on June 18, 1992, seven months after the release of Jackson's 1991 "Dangerous" album. It was not a significant commercial success. The book was reissued by the British publisher Transworld on July 27, 2009, following Jackson's death the previous month on June 25, 2009.
Jackson dedicated "Dancing the Dream" "with love" to his mother Katherine, and has an introduction written by his longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor.
The volume consists of 46 pieces of poetry and essays. The subjects Jackson writes about are primarily children, animals and the environment. For example, one specific poem titled "Look Again, Baby Seal" promotes environmentalism as Jackson imagines anthropomorphic seals who brood about the fate of being killed by hunters. Another poem ("So the Elephants March") presents elephants that refuse to be killed in order for ivory pieces to be made from their tusks. A third piece ("Mother Earth") describes a struggle to cope with the discovery of an oil-covered seagull feather. To stress the theme of environmentalism and the necessity for action, Jackson writes in the essay, "We've been treating Mother Earth the way some people treat a rental apartment. Just trash it and move on."
"Dancing the Dream" includes approximately 100 photographs. Although the volume was promoted to include previously unreleased photographs of Jackson, some of the photographs had been previously published, such as those that were published in the 1985 Jackson calendar, and others that had been published in magazines such as "Ebony" and "People". Furthermore, the volume included photographs converted from stills of Jackson's music videos "Black or White" (1991) and "Remember the Time" (1992), in addition to images of his 1991 performance at MTV's tenth anniversary celebration. Jackson commissioned artwork for "Dancing the Dream" from Nate Giorgio and David Nordahl, whom Jackson met in the 1980s and with whom he subsequently developed a professional relationship.
"Dancing the Dream" was first published on June 18, 1992, by Doubleday. It followed Jackson's 1988 autobiography "Moonwalk", which was also published by the American company. Prior to publication, "Dancing the Dream" was hailed by the publishers as a book that would "take us deep into [Jackson's] heart and soul", as well as "an inspirational and passionate volume of unparalleled humanity". In his only interview to promote "Dancing the Dream", Jackson described the book as being "just a verbal expression of what I usually express through my music and my dance." After his death on June 25, 2009, the British company Transworld reissued the book the following month on July 27, 2009.
A representative for Doubleday (Marly Rusoff) revealed in March 1993 that the company shipped 133,000 copies of the book, and took around 80,000 returns and 3000 reorders. Thus, the project was close to 60% down in total sales. Rusoff stated that the commercial performance of "Dancing the Dream" was low because an anticipated Jackson tour of the United States never occurred. He commented, "The reviews—and there were some—were rather discouraging. He did do a Europe tour and the British edition did quite well. This kind of book depends on celebrity visibility."
During a Simulchat in 1995, Jackson stated, "I wrote a book called "Dancing the Dream". It was more autobiographical than "Moonwalk", which I did with Mrs. Onassis. It wasn't full of gossip and scandal and all that trash that people write, so I don't think people paid much attention to it, but it came from my heart. It was essays, thoughts and things that I've thought about while on tour."
"Bury Me in a Free Land" is a poem by African-American writer and abolitionist Frances Harper, written for "The Anti-Slavery Bugle" newspaper in 1858.

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