New Black Aesthetics: Post–Civil Rights African American Poetry

doi:10.1017/9781108699518.003

1 - New Black Aesthetics: Post–Civil Rights African American Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2021

Keith D. Leonard

Edited by

Timothy Yu

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Timothy Yu: Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin

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Summary

If African American poets have achieved a new kind of freedom in the twenty-first century, they have also pursued multiple styles through their modes of introspection. This broader inward-turning is continuous with the defining priorities of the Black Arts Movement, a principle that might be more aptly named self-determination. Contemporary African American poets have embraced black culture as a historical and cultural landscape to be mapped into new frontiers in order to make the individual black self and then to develop terms for the liberation of that self. These pursuits of self-examination and self-determination comprise at least four broad and overlapping realms of practice: apolitical introspection; a rethinking of African American history and heritage beyond the terms of simple affirmation; a personalized mode of collectivist protest in line with Black Arts Movement practices; and a black literary collective action enacted by the numerous African American writers collectives and workshops that have arisen since the 1960s. Poets discussed include Gregory Pardlo, Natasha Trethewey, Tyehimba Jess, Patricia Smith, Nikky Finney, Nathaniel Mackey, alongside groups such as Cave Canem and movements like #BlackPoetsSpeakOut.

Keywords

poetry black African American aesthetics politics Black Arts Movement

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Twenty-First-Century American Poetry , pp. 17 - 30

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108699518.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2021

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