Give the Poets Some.

Three contemporary poets whose work deserve our props

When I teach black poetry, I generally start by asking my students if they, or anyone in their family, has bought a book of black poetry in the last six months. When no hands go up I add six months and keep adding time until I get to two years. Seldom will I find students, or families, who are reading, or better yet, financially supporting our poets. This is not unusual in a culture where poetry is given little serious consideration in secondary education and the teaching of poetry is generally left to poets themselves.

Keeping this in mind, I've looked at the recent books of three extraordinary poets. The common road that all of these poets travel is that they are not afraid to take chances by looking into their own souls.

Pamela Sneed, in her first book Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery (Owl/Henry Holt & Co., 1998), is a hurricane in the making. Openly lesbian and proud of it, she confronts the homophobic spirit in much of the black community. In her poem "The Final Solution," she writes, "Last night in your arms/touching your tongue to mine/I forgot/lesbianism is an illness/caused by deficiency/of good d--k." She goes on to jerk our memories with "This morning as I dreamt/of you last night/a well-known newspaper/in the Black community/printed a letter saying/we should be made to wear/stars on our clothes/be forced into ghetto camps/and if our perversion/is still not cured/there will be a final solution."

From her "Monologue to God" to the deep questions all artists ask themselves about the importance of putting language to paper and transforming ideas into words, Sneed shows she is not afraid of fighting, of freedom, of writing or of love.

Sybil Kein in Creole Journal: The Louisiana Poems (Lotus Press, Inc., 1999), is multilanguaged and multicultural. These "Louisiana poems" from Detroit's Lotus Press openly challenge the secrets of color, love and lust. Kein rides easily between English and her Louisiana Creole language. She is wrapped tightly in her culture and like "soft measured rain at dawn," she is an ambassador of hidden truths. The realty of color and race swims underwater through out this collection.

Yusef Komunyakaa writes of Willie James King's Wooden Windows (SRLR Press, 1999), "Here's a voice we can trust. I know King's terrain, as many of us do and the feelings of closeness that pervade each trope countersinks its impulse securely inside our hearts and minds." Indeed, King is a poet of volcanic range who has a love affair with the language of nature. We hear his voice at the "temple of trees" among "that terrible thud of thunder/with wild rain and September/pecans." He is a dancer with words. His "Bloodline" is ours, "they call it/family reunion/but you call it/fencing."

The best of our poets are thinkers as well as activist and writers. Yes, they read and perform but there is much, much more to their lives. They are lovers of life and, by necessity, are more philosophical than most. Just as we must always give the drummer some, we must, especially if his or her best is in the oral and written traditions and challenges of fine writing, give the poets some.

--Haki R. Madhubuti is a poet, publisher and professor of English and Founder & Director Emeritus of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center at Chicago State University. His latest books are HeartLove: Wedding and Love Poems and Tough Notes: Messages to Young Black Men and Memoirs of a Poet-Activist. E-mail: [e-mail].