Overview

Uncovering how poetry refigures Black history to imagine a more just present and future “Poets are lyric historians,” proclaimed Langston Hughes. Today, historical poetry offers a lyric history necessary to our current moment—poetry with the power to correct the past, realign the present, and create a more hopeful, or even hoped-for, future. The Necessary Past: Revising History in Contemporary African American Poetry focuses on six of today’s most celebrated poets: Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Trethewey, A. Van Jordan, Kevin Young, Frank X Walker, and Camille T. Dungy. Their works reimagine the interiority of Black historical figures like the so-called Venus Hottentot Sara Baartman and the would-be spelling champion MacNolia Cox, the African American Native Guard who fought in the Civil War and the unknown victims of domestic violence, Jack Johnson and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Medgar Evers and those freed and enslaved in the early nineteenth century. These poets shift the power dynamic in revising our shared history, reconfiguring who speaks and whose stories are told, and writing a past that frees readers to change the present and envision a more just future.

Full Product Details

Author:   Annette Debo
Publisher:   Northwestern University Press
Imprint:   Northwestern University Press
Weight:   0.272kg
ISBN:  

9780810146877

ISBN 10:   0810146878
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   30 April 2024
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction The Contemporary Wave of Historical Poetry Chapter 1 Praising the Seers: Celebrating the Historical Influence of Robert Hayden, Michael S. Harper, and Rita Dove Chapter 2 Digging Up the Past: Elizabeth Alexander’s The Venus Hottentot Chapter 3 Tending the Graves: Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard Chapter 4 Achieving the Extraordinary: A. Van Jordan’s M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A Chapter 5 Sampling History: Kevin Young’s To Repel Ghosts: The Remix Chapter 6 Reconciling the Past: Frank X Walker’s Turn Me Loose Chapter 7 Excavating Captive Lives: Camille T. Dungy’s Suck on the Marrow Conclusion The Historical Impulse, the Zeitgeist of a Generation Notes Bibliography

Reviews

“As a sharp-eyed and hospitable introduction to the most ambitious poems of Elizabeth Alexander, Camille Dungy, Kevin Young, and company, this book has few equals. And its central focus—the fine art and raw politics of retelling Black history in the twenty-first century—could not be more relevant.” —William J. Maxwell, Washington University in St. Louis

Author Information

Annette Debo is a professor of English at Western Carolina University. She is the author of The American H.D. (2012) and editor of H.D.'s Within the Walls and What Do I Love? (2014), as well as coeditor of the MLA volume Approaches to Teaching H.D.'s Poetry and Prose (2011).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions