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  • The Editor's Note
  • Charles Henry Rowell

This issue of Callaloo introduces a new wave of African-American poetry—my admittedly partisan and partial review of the kinds and quality of literary poems that black writers, between twenty and forty odd years of age, are now creating in the United States. Of course, I have not included all of the African-American poets who fall within this group or age range; their sheer numbers would overwhelm this periodical project, pushing it well past four hundred pages. Actually, this wave of poets might be the largest literary group of working black writers that the United States has ever known. The selected poems by the seventeen poets in this issue of Callaloo should be read, not as a complete picture of the current poetry scene of this new wave, but as a partial representation of its artistry—a representation that, fleshed out by interviews with some of its poets, demonstrates the range and depth of the critical and aesthetic landscape of the new African-American poetry.

Because I am only giving the outlines of this critical and aesthetic landscape and offering only a sampling of its representative voices, I have no doubt that some readers will ask why Sharan Strange and Major Jackson, for example, are not in this issue. The devout reader of Callaloo will remember that, from time to time, these and other poets of their generation have graced the pages of the journal, that in addition to publishing work by established writers we have always been and continue to be interested in identifying, nurturing, promoting, and publishing new and emerging writers. "Where are Carl Phillips and Kevin Young?" others might ask. "Why aren't they in the issue?" We have all witnessed and applauded the national meteoric rise of these two poets, whose writings (and interviews) have also appeared in earlier numbers of Callaloo. The fact is that not a few of the poets whose work appears in this issue of the journal may be unfamiliar to our readers. Indeed, the new voices I have included here will, I am certain, reveal for our readers a new dimension of contemporary African-American poetry. I am thinking of the poetry of Alysa Hayes, Jericho Brown, Wendy Walters, Nehassaiu deGannes, Ronaldo Wilson, Fred Moten, and Gregory Pardlo—none of whom have, as of this writing, published a collection of poems. Alongside these new poets, I have placed ten others (one without an interview) who have not only published collections of poems but who have also been culture workers in the interest of African-American literature. Some hold university positions teaching in creative writing and literature programs, while others have led important poetry workshops across the country during summer months. Thomas Sayers Ellis, Forrest Hamer, Terrence Hayes, Honorée Fannone Jeffers, A. Van Jordan, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Deborah Richards, Tracy K. Smith, and Natasha Threthewey—these poets, along with Fred Moten, not only gave me poems for the issue but full-length interviews, which are also published here. As their interviews and poems signify, not a few of these poets have already been able to garner an enviable presence on the North American poetry scene, and, with the work they create, some of them and [End Page vii] their contemporaries are competing and winning distinguished fellowships and national poetry awards and prizes.

In my notes introducing the special poetry issue celebrating the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of Callaloo (24.3, Summer, 2001), I commented on African-American poetry from the 1960s to the present. I want now to revise the statement I made about the different generations of black poets in the United States, starting with the 1960s. It is clear, as I stated in "A Bold Gesture: Notes from the Editor," that there were two distinct groups of poets who wrote during the period described as the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (and early 1970s). In terms of literary poetry and its directions after the Movement, what is not clear is how we should describe the poets who began writing after the demise of the Movement. In the anniversary issue of Callaloo, I mentioned two generations of poets, but, in reading...

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