Sunday, December 30, 2018

Fragment re: Black Nationalist Poetry (Clara B. Jones)


The new genre, Black Nationalist Poetry may have something in common with Joyce & Yeats [Irish Nationalism]...also, there are a number of similarities w authoritarian movements of 1930s & 40s [e.g., individual subordinate to group; realism]...Black Nationalist Poetry appears to be a backlash to calls for diversity in the Poetry community, led by Morgan Parker and presented in manifesto form in her Harriet: The Blog blogpost abt 1 month ago...she states that the roots of Black Nationalist Poetry can be found in the Poetry of Nikki Giovanni...ummm...how about Cesaire's "negritude?"...or, Black Arts Movement...?...BTW, Black Nationalist Poetry is, for the most part, allied w Modernism [metanarratives (institutional racism; the underclass), essentialism (Binary--black : white); utopianism; heroic (e.g., MLK, Malcolm X; Nikki Giovanni), allegories? (see Rankine)]...Post-modernist & Post-structuralist concepts concerning the primacy of text [Derrida]; construction/performance of race; interpretation being in the hands of the reader/audience; discursive "alliances [Foucault], etc., are, IMO, not emphasized...Black Nationalist Poetry's ties to Modernism may account for its Conservatism [ties to the past/slavery/Africa; ties to myth]...a sense in which Black Nationalist Poetry is DECIDEDLY POSTMODERNIST is the sense in which the poem is NOT autonomous but, rather, is to be interpreted in its Social and Political context...

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