New Directions

Volume 8 | Issue 3 Article 14

4-1-1981

Book Reviews: The Collected Poems Of SterlingBrownStephen E. Henderson

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Recommended CitationHenderson, Stephen E. (1981) "Book Reviews: The Collected Poems Of Sterling Brown," New Directions: Vol. 8: Iss. 3, Article 14.Available at: http://dh.howard.edu/newdirections/vol8/iss3/14

deals with the underlying social realityin softened but concrete manner.Employing social commentary as atheme, he attacks the American societythat puts profits before people. Example,in a dialogue of the three characters,Newbolt, Law and Mary Carson in"Natalie Mann":

Newbolt... but don't you think there are moreimmediate problems which we oughtto clear up first, before going so farafield? Lynching and Jim-crowism, forexample?

Mary CarsonThey are the outgrowth of materialism,my dear, and will die out of their ownaccord when it does.

NewboltBut in the meantime, hundreds arebeing brutally butchered, and millionsmade to suffer the injustices ofsegregation.

LawBesides, how are you going to combatthis materialism that you speak ofunless you go for its concretemanifestations?

Mary CaisonThought, Mr. Law, is the ruling powerof the world. Beautiful thoughts willsupplant evil ones. They will reshapethe whole contour of the world.

In "The Sacred Factory," an expression-istic drama, Toomer deals with hisspectacle of humanity's disintegration.He severely castigates the spiritual dis-integration of America. The play evokesthe emotional and spiritual quality ofman.

In his aphorisms and maxims, Toomer'sreligious and mystical views are felt.Here, he transforms his personal experi-ences and the wisdom he gained fromthe philosopher George Gurdjieff intouniversally meaningful criticisms oflife. The writings in this section alsoreflect Toomer's departure from literary

creativity to philosophy, psychology,and spiritual reforms. His prevailingthemes are human nature and humanvalues.

Nature is natural. Human nature,by nature, is all right. It is theacquired or false "nature" ofmen that is all wrong.

Therefore our aim must be, ... toremove whatever is obstructingour normal development.

Change human nature? Not at all.Get rid of obstructions and culti-vate human nature.

In the "Editor's Note" of the dramasection, Darwin Turner praises Toomer."Most of Toomer's white contempo-raries who wrote serious dramas aboutblack protagonists, such as EdwardSheldon, 'The Nigger' (1909), EugeneO'Neill 'The Emperor Jones' (1920)and even Ridgely Torrence 'Three Playsfor a Negro Theater' (1917) evaded criti-cizing America's treatment of its blackcitizens," Turner notes. "Toomer at-tacked white America for judging blacksaccording to spurious standards ofmorality and art, repressing black artists,and exploiting black women."

It is often difficult to discern where thereal Toomer begins and where the ficti-tious Toomer ends. As Turner wellnotes, Toomer appears as "a delightfulpersonality-candid, self-assured, per-suasive, witty, poetic, and informative."Based on Toomer's presentation of hisown values, readers sense him to be areconciler, unifier, humanist and uni-versalist. Whether or not he truly prac-ticed his preaching in real life has yet tobe answered.

Darwin Turner has made a solid contri-bution to the literary world by editingand shaping the works of this literaryfigure.

It is evident that despite his insistenceon "racelessness," Toomer was troubledby an audience not receptive to his

philosophy. Though his development 27

of the concept of "racelessness" wastheoretically and philosophically viable,it could not be realized in a societywhich for 300 years had emphasized theseparation of whites from non-whites.

Toomer's penchant for conjuring anidyllic "American race" may havetouched the emotions of many, but forothers, it constitutes a painful decep-tion that denied their past suffering. 0

The reviewer is a poet who is currently studyingfor a doctorate in the English Department, HowardUniversity.

The Collected PoemsOf Sterling BrownEdited by Michael S. HarperHarper and Row, New York257 pp., $12.95

Reviewed byStephen E. Henderson

At long last we have, in The CollectedPoems of Sterling A. Brown, a repre-sentative collection of the poet's workin a single accessible volume. Those ofus who have read his poems over theyears and who have heard his dynamicreadings tend somehow to forget thatSterling Brown's 1932 classic, SouthernRoad, had been out of printfor yearsbefore it was reissued in 1975. We tendto forget, too, that many of the poet'smore familiar poems are not included inSouthern Road-poems such as IIOldLem" and "Remembering Nat Turner."These are scattered through a widevariety of publications, textbooks andanthologies, some now out of print andaccessible only to the dedicated student.

The Last Ride of Wild Bill, a brilliantmock heroic work did not appear inprint until 1975, when it was publishedby Broadside Press along with 11

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28 other narrative poems. Although mostreaders might have heard of Brown'sother unpublished work, they wereunaware how diverse and good thiswork was. A surprise of pleasant natureawaits them in this latest collection.Even the dedicated students will findsomething new, not only in the indi-vidual poems but in the sense that theycreate of an expanded gallery of Brown-ian portraits and an increased aware-ness of the poet's range and skill. Theywill find that the poet's interest in folkheroes and folkways extends to WestIndians in New York as well as toCreoles and Cajuns in Louisiana.

They will find poems that are politicalin the populist spirit of Carl Sandburg,Langston Hughes and Frank Mar-shall Davis. In "The New Congo,"

. for example, they will find a scathingsatire on the pretension and hypocrisyof the race leaders who exploit themasses. The scene is familiar, thelanguage fresh, the portrayal devastating.And, at the same time Brown exposesthe hypocrisy in the real world, hedemolishes the racial stereotypes of thesongwriters, and the poets like VachelLindsay: '

Suave big jigs in a conference room,Big job jigs, with their jobs unstable,Sweated and fumed and trembled

'round the tableTrembled 'round the tableSat around as gloomy as the

watchers of a tombTapped upon the tableBoom, Boom, Boom.

As usual, the masses are realisticallyportrayed, as in two light-heartedsatires on the Marcus Garvey move-ment, ''Negro Improvement League"and "The Temple." In the first poem,the narrator wonders at the ostentationof a Harlem parade. Then the real mean-ing of racial advancement dawns onhim:

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Forwho was there but GwendolynWith a frock she looked quite

stunning inAnd a brand new hat, near worthy ofHer impudent brown face

Her rougish shoulders, and her neatAnd pretty legs, and naughty feetIn patent leather slippers, allWere really quite too bad

Progressive Ethiopians,Societies for Race Advance,Should go down on their knees, and

thankHer mother and her dad.

The Collected Poems, edited by fellowpoet Michael S. Harper of Brown Univer-sity, is the fifth in the National PoetrySeries for 1980. It is indispensable to.anyone interested in the diversity ofAmerican poetry.

The poems in this collection aredivided into eight parts, with eachgiving the reader more than a glimpseof the richness of Brown's creativethought.

Part One, "Harlem Stopover," revealstalent not generally known before.''Negro Improvement League," forinstance, is not only a delightful satirebut a skillful exercise in versification."The Temple" is an interesting render-ing of West Indian folk speech."Roberta Lee" will remind readers ofthe familiar "Cabaret," a small master-piece in Southem Road.

Part Two, "The Cotton South," con-tains five poems, including the famous"Old Lem" and "Sharecroppers," aheroic tale of union organizing.

Part Three, "Down in Atlanta," con-tains six poems including the quietlypowerful "An Old Woman Remembers."What the woman remembers is the raceriot of 1906, and she recounts thebrutality heaped upon Black folks.Black folks fighting back, leaving their.

jobs, their drinking, and even theirpraying.

All came back home- they had beentoo long away-

A lot of visitors had been looking forthem.

They sat on their front stoops and intheir yards,

Not talking much, but ready; theirwelcome ready:

Their shotguns oiled and loaded ontheir knees.

"And thenThere wasn't any riot any more."

Part Four, "Rocks Cried Out," containsone of Brown's finest poems, "Remem-bering Nat Turner," and other previous-ly unpublished work of which twoshould be mentioned. "Memo: For theRace Orators, II which treats the themeof betrayal and "Call for Barnum," achilling study of the lyncher as anentrepreneur. For an appreciation ofthe power of the latter poem, oneshould compare it with poems onlynching by Richard Wright, CounteeCullen and Claude McKay.

Part Five, "Road to the Left," identifiesBrown with the proletariat themes ofthe 1930s and with the progressivewriters of the period. A collection ofvignettes entitled "Side By Side" is .modelled on The Spoon River Anthologyof Edgar Lee Masters and addresses theseparation and exploitation of Blacksand poor whites. The theme appears inSouthem Road also but is concentratedhere and provides an important glimpseof the poet's feelings and politicalthought.

Part Six, "Frilot Cove, II contains.poems written about the Creoles andthe Cajuns. Among the more strikingstudies are the moving tragedy of "LetUs Suppose," the pathos of "Cloteel,"the heroism and the folklore of "ParishDoctor, II the quiet drama of "Uncle

Joe," and the romantic sentiment of"Louisiana Pastoral."

Part Seven, 'Washington, D. c.," con-sists of a previously unpublished poemand others that are not generally acces-sible, including the technically accom-plished "Puttin' on Dog," with itsinfectuous dance rhythms.

Part Eight, "Remembrances," is a groupof romantic lyrics ranging in style fromfonnallove lyrics and nature poems tothe love song "Isaiah to Mandy" andone of the poet's best known blues,"Long Track Blues."

Despite some important omissions anda few textual errors, this volume goes along way toward giving the reader acomprehensive look at the poetry ofSterling Brown, professor emeritus atHoward University. .

The reviewer is director of the Institute for theArts and the Humanities at Howard University,and author of "Understanding the New BlackPoetry."

The Salt EatersBy Toni Cade BambaraRandom House, New York295 pp., $9.95

Reviewed by Harriet Jackson Scarupa

"I need another sixties. The energy ofthe seventies just don't do me nuthin."So says one character in ''Broken FieldRunning," a short story in Toni CadeBarnbara's collection, "The Sea BirdsAre Still Alive."

Through this collection and her previ-ous one, "Gorilla, My Love," Barnbarahas earned a reputation as one of ourpremiere writers of short stories, storiesthat have been likened (byMari Evans)to "shavins off our Black experience-like chocolate. Bittersweet, that is."

In her first novel, "The Salt Eaters,"Barnbara takes some of the themes shehas explored in her short stories-e.g.

the contrast between '60s activism and'70s narcissism-and weaves an intri-cate poetic mesh. The result is at timesperplexing, at times exhilarating, butnever boring.

The novel opens with a demandingquestion: "Are you sure, sweetheart,that you want to be well?" It is a ques-tion posed by Minnie Ransom "in herflouncy dress and hip shoes withflowers peeking out of her turban andsmelling like coconut Afro spray."Minnie is a healer, "the real thing," forshe is "known to calm fretful babieswith a smile or a pinch of the thigh,known to cool out nervous wives whobled all the time and couldn't standstill, known to dissolve hard lumps inthe body that the doctors in the countyhospital called cancers."Right now Minnie holds center stagein a room in the Southwest CommunityInfirmary in a southern town calledClaybourne. Beforeher, on a stool, sitsone Velma Henry, a radical communityworker who has succumbed to despair.Velma had worn her identities like astring of cowrie beads: activist, na-tionalist, feminist, environmentalist,wife, mother, daughter, goddaughter,sister, friend, neighbor. ... But nowshe has added another bead to her stringof identities: attempted suicide. Whichis why she is now sitting in the South-west Community Infirmary, hospitalgown covering her body, expressionfrozen on her face, and listening toMinnie as she demands: "Are you sure,sweetheart, that you want to be well?"And again: "Just so's you're sure, sweet-heart, and ready to be healed, causewholeness is no trifling matter. A lot ofweight when you're well."

Barnbara never tells us exactly whatled Velma to seek the final solutionthrough slashed wrists and gassedlungs. Instead, she suggests, implies,assumes, hints, evokes, juxtaposing thepas de deux of Minnie and Velma in

the healing room against bits and pieces 29

of Velma's life and of those who areconnected to it and against snippets ofmyths that speak of our heritage.

Barnbara's is not the tale of one par-ticular woman's neurosis-in the man-ner of so many of the "women's books"being penned these days. Hers is thetale of all who are committed, still, tomaking the world a better place at atime when such sentiment almostseems anachronistic and of all thosewho tend to put everyone else's needsbefore their own. Does Velma's mentalcollapse indicate her selfishness, hersurrender to self-centeredness? Perhaps.But one of her friends offers anotherexplanation: ''Velma's never been thecenter of her own life before."

Just as she has in her short stories,Barnbara proves oh-so-adept at strikingthe chords of our common experience.To 'put everyone's life before one's ownseems that special weakness of women,especially Black women. To seek escapefrom relentless pressures in sickness-whether mental or physical-is a temp-tation we've all experienced. To liveamidst decaying ghettoes and poisonedair, to watch fonner "revolutionaries"fritter away their time in "id ego illogi-cal debates" [Bambara's words], to re-peatedly confront racism and sexismand militarism and all the other de-structive isms, to simply pick up a news-paper with its monotony of horrors, todo all this and more and still manageto hold onto hope-and one's sanity-is no mean feat. Or as the inimitableMinnie puts it, "wholeness is no triflingmatter."Barnbara challenges us to confront thisreality and then, through Minnie, shethrows a second challenge our way:"Decide what you want to do withwholeness."

And so, the chord is struck: wholenessis no trifling matter. Then, too, Barn-bara's is no trifling talent.

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