In this Book
- Into a Light Both Brilliant and Unseen: Conversations with Contemporary Black Poets
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: University of Georgia Press
summary
Malin Pereira’s collection of eight interviews with leading contemporary African American poets offers an in-depth look at the cultural and aesthetic perspectives of the post–Black Arts Movement generation.
 
This volume includes unpublished interviews Pereira conducted with Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Thylias Moss, Harryette Mullen, Cornelius Eady, and Elizabeth Alexander, as well as conversations with Rita Dove and Cyrus Cassells previously in print. Largely published since 1980, each of these poets has at least four books. Their influence on new generations of poets has been wide-reaching.
 
The work of this group, says Pereira, is a departure from the previous generation’s proscriptive manifestos in favor of more inclusive voices, perspectives, and techniques. Although these poets reject a rigid adherence to a specific black aesthetic, their work just as effectively probes racism, stereotyping, and racial politics. Unlike Amiri Baraka’s claim in “Home” that he becomes blacker and blacker, positioning race as a defining essence, these poets imagine a plurality of ideas about the relationship between blackness and black poetry. They question the idea of an established literary canon defining black literature. For these poets, Pereira says, the idea of “home” is found both in black poetry circles and in the wider transnational community of literature.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- Wanda Coleman
- pp. 9-44
- Yusef Komunyakaa
- pp. 45-68
- Harryette Mullen
- pp. 100-121
- Thylias Moss
- pp. 122-162
- Cornelius Eady
- pp. 163-200
- Cyrus Cassells
- pp. 201-215
- Elizabeth Alexander
- pp. 216-242
- Bibliography
- pp. 243-260
Additional Information
ISBN
9780820337340
Related ISBN(s)
9780820331072
MARC Record
OCLC
693782700
Pages
260
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No