Working Title — Black Lives Matter: The Extension of Political Poetry in the Black Arts Movement and the Harlem Renaissance Revealing American Resistance to the Diversity of Black Lives
Through several centuries, poetry has held a position in America as an agent of social change, a medium of choice for the rebel, the activist. Poets of the Harlem Renaissance and of the Black Arts Movement share a belief in this central characteristic of poetry despite having radically different aesthetics. The defining characteristics of Harlem and Black Arts are not much different than the ones found in the poetry of Black Lives Matter today. The two prominent literary and cultural movements of black arts are similar, and these same qualities are found in the emerging third movement. What is problematic and deeply troubling about these similarities is what they reveal about America’s restrictions on the black arts and the roles they allow them to fill within society and culture. If these movements are so similar in aesthetic, then it is possible they are fulfilling the specific role in American society set apart for black arts. If this is so, then these movements cannot be successful in creating change through social activism.
The poetry of Harlem and Black Arts have strong commonalities in form and content. Black poets of both literary movements rejected, remodeled, resisted, and reappropriated European-inspired poetics and instead looked to jazz, the blues, vernacular speech, and the lives of black people to form their writing. Both aesthetics focused on the acceptance of black culture, music, and art forms and a rejection of white America’s cultural and artistic standards. The aesthetic that began in the Harlem Renaissance focused on creating a unique African American identity and lamenting the position of the Negro in white America.
Currently, the Black Lives Matter movement is gaining influence in public spheres, especially in the literary community. The poetry written in support for the movement focuses on racial injustices, on a celebration of blackness. These commonalities have become amplified as more and more poets are responding to not just the injustices occurring in America, but also to previous poets of the two movements. The poetry is a complex and dynamic response to the poets of the past. These politically charged lines have demands similar to the poets of Harlem and Black Arts. They demand solutions to racism in America, demand recognition of equality, demand empathy from other races, demand action from their own while following the guiding principles of the two previous movements. For centuries, and despite their rich diversity, black poets have focused on the same themes of identity, race, and oppression, and their focus may reveal a larger American resistance to a true poetic reflection of black lives.
(I have a longer proposal, but this seemed the most succinct introduction to what I’m trying to accomplish. Longer proposal available here, if you want to read. The longer proposal has aspects I want to incorporate into the actual essay as well.)
I like the full proposal because it more explicitly introduces some sources and charts a more focused trajectory from HR poets to BAM poets and beyond–noting similarities as well as differences. I would have liked to see the argument framed in the context of the readings you showed today: one (on MLK) seemed to anticipate a poetry of explicit critique and resistance; another (on Moss) charted a path of praise the included but was not determined by identity; the the third (Rabinowitz) articulated a poetic of reading beyond the role assigned, the “social death” or “corpseing” borne by black poets. That author suggested a poetics that could be more than an epitaph, but that was still an honest reflection of struggle. Your argument makes most sense when presented as a version of the latter two, and doing so makes it seem less fatalistic and more permissive. We can talk a bit more about what I mean by this during our meeting.