Understanding Etheridge Knight

Michael S. Collins

Description

Understanding Etheridge Knight introduces readers to a major—but understudied—American poet. Etheridge Knight (1931-1991) survived a shrapnel wound suffered during military service in Korea, as well as a drug addiction that led to an eight-year prison sentence, to publish five volumes of poetry and a small cache of powerful prose. His status in the front ranks of American poets and thinkers on poetry was acknowledged in 1984, when he won the Shelley Memorial Award, which had previously gone, as an acknowledgement of "genius and need," to E.E. Cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, and W. S. Merwin.

In this first book-length study of Knight and his complete body of work, Michael Collins examines the poetry of a complex literary figure who, following imprisonment, transformed his life to establish himself as a charismatic voice in American poetry and an accomplished teacher at institutions such as the University of Hartford, Lincoln University, and his own Free Peoples Poetry Workshops.

Beginning with a concise biography of Knight, Collins explores Knight's volumes of poetry including Poems from Prison, Black Voices from Prison, Born of a Woman, and The Essential Etheridge Knight. Understanding Etheridge Knight brings attention to a crucial era in African American and American poetry, and to the literature of the incarcerated, while reflecting on the life and work of an original voice in American poetry.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Coerción
• América
• Mr.
• Jonathan Simon
• Superiority (short story)
• Dirge
• Etheridge Knight
• Impossibility
• Self-love
• Untouchability
• Impressment
• Stephen Dedalus
• Ishmael Reed
• Penology
• General officer
• Lucretius
• Coercion
• African American
• Jean Genet
• Propaganda
• Lucretii
• General
• Gary Gilmore
• American
• V.
• Eldridge Cleaver
• Black
• MR

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781611172638
• Langue: English

Extrait

UNDERSTANDING ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE
Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on
Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster
Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme | The Beats
Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly
T. C. Boyle | Raymond Carver | Fred Chappell | Chicano Literature
Contemporary American Drama | Contemporary American Horror Fiction
Contemporary American Literary Theory
Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926–1970
Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970–2000
Contemporary Chicana Literature | Robert Coover | Philip K. Dick
James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | John Gardner | George Garrett
Tim Gautreaux | John Hawkes | Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley
James Leo Herlihy | John Irving | Randall Jarrell | Charles Johnson
Diane Johnson | Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy | Jack Kerouac
Jamaica Kincaid | Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner | Ursula K. Le Guin
Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet | Bobbie Ann Mason
Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle | Carson McCullers
W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Lorrie Moore | Toni Morrison’s Fiction
Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor | Joyce Carol Oates | Tim O’Brien
Flannery O’Connor | Cynthia Ozick | Walker Percy | Katherine Anne Porter
Richard Powers | Reynolds Price | Annie Proulx | Thomas Pynchon
Theodore Roethke | Philip Roth | May Sarton | Hubert Selby, Jr.
Mary Lee Settle | Neil Simon | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley
Gary Snyder | William Stafford | Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor
Kurt Vonnegut | David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch
Eudora Welty | Tennessee Williams | August Wilson | Charles Wright
UNDERSTANDING
ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
Michael S. Collins

The University of South Carolina Press
© 2012 University of South Carolina
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2012 Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2013
www.sc.edu/uscpress
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Excerpts from “It Was a Funky Deal,” “The Sun Came,” “A Poem for Black Relocation Centers,” “For Freckle-Faced Gerald,” “The Warden Said to Me the Other Day,” “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane,” “Another Poem for Me,” “On Watching Politicians Perform at Martin Luther King’s Funeral,” “Belly Song,” “Green Grass and Yellow Balloons,” “One Day We Shall Go Back,” “The Bones of My Father,” “Cop Out Session,” “For Langston Hughes,” “Welcome Back, Mr. Knight: Love of My Life,” “A Poem for Galway Kinnell,” “We Free Singers Be,” “And Tell Me Poet, Can Love Exist in Slavery,” “My Uncle Is My Honor and a Guest in My House,” “I and Your Eyes,” “Poem for the Liberation of South Africa,” “A Black Poet Leaps to His Death,” “At a VA Hospital in the Middle of the United States of America,” “Rehabilitation and Treatment in the Prisons of America,” and “Various Protestations from Various People,” from The Essential Etheridge Knight, by Etheridge Knight, © 1986, are reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.
Broadside Press has granted permission for this book to excerpt the following poems, which were first published by Broadside: “To Make a Poem in Prison,” “It Was a Funky Deal,” “The Sun Came,” “For Langston Hughes,” “Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane,” “For Freckle-Faced Gerald,” “Cell Song,” “The Idea of Ancestry,” and “2 Poems for Black Relocation Centers” (all first appeared in Poems from Prison, by Etheridge Knight, © 1968 by Broadside Press); Broadside has also granted permission for this book to excerpt “Genesis,” “Huey,” “A Poem to Be Recited,” “On Watching Politicians Perform at Martin Luther King’s Funeral,” “Belly Song,” “Green Grass and Yellow Balloons,” “The Bones of My Father,” “This Poem Is For,” “My Life, the Quality of Which,” “Cop-Out Session,” “A Love Poem,” “For Mary Ellen McAnally,” “For Eric Dolphy,” and the introductory letter in Belly Song (all first appeared in Belly Song, by Etheridge Knight, © 1973 by Broadside Press).
The Worcester Review has granted permission for this book to quote from Knight’s poem “Behind the Beat Look Is a Sweet Tongue and a Boogie Foot (for those who see me as a tragic figure).”
The Painted Bride Quarterly as well as Knight’s literary executor, Janice Knight-Mooney, have granted permission for this book to excerpt the following Knight poems: “Things Awfully Quiet in America,” “Who Knows???,” and “Dearly/ Beloved/ Mizzie.”
The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition as follows:
Collins, Michael S., 1959–
Understanding Etheridge Knight / Michael S. Collins.
p. cm. (Understanding contemporary American literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-066-5 (hardback)
1. Knight, Etheridge, 1931–1991 Criticism and interpretation. 2. Poets, American 20th century Biography. 3. African American poets Biography.
I. Title.
PS3561.N45Z65 2012
818'.5409 dc23
[B]
2011052084
ISBN 978-1-61117-263-8 (ebook)
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Introduction: Knight’s Resurrections
Chapter 2
Knight in the Aleascape
Chapter 3
Black Voices from Prison
Chapter 4
Belly Song and Other Poems
Chapter 5
Born of a Woman: New and Selected Poems
Chapter 6
The Essential Etheridge Knight
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931–2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy which will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, “the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed.” Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli’s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape, and provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to Daying and Tianchen, my wife and son, who bore with me while I worked on this book and related projects. I am also grateful to the late, great Sybil Ford, my grandmother, who used to pour out wisdom for hours while she cooked in her kitchen and I sat and listened, and who was always rooting for me.
I also thank Eunice Knight-Bowens, who not only answered my questions about her brother but showed me the meaning of hospitality as she took me on a tour of everything from her brother’s last address to the family plot where Etheridge Knight is buried; Janice Knight-Mooney, her brother’s literary executor, who granted me permission to quote from Knight’s out-of-print poetry collections, from his uncollected poetry, and from material in Knight archives at Butler University and the University of Toledo; the Rev. Dr. Mary McAnally for allowing me to quote from her chronology of her marriage to Knight, for educating me about her own life, and for granting permission for me to quote from Knight correspondence that belongs to her; Roberto Giammanco, one of the early nurturers of Knight’s work, for granting me permission to quote from his letters to Knight; Steve and Francy Stoller, who graciously answered my questions about the Knight they knew; Fran Quinn, who contacted me, educated me about the Knight he knew, and sent me a copy of the Worcester Review Knight issue that he midwifed; Sonia Sanchez, who permitted me to quote from a letter she wrote to Knight; Rodger Martin, who allowed me to quote remarks he made