Writers of the Black Chicago Renaissance

Margaret Esse Danner

Margaret esse danner (January 12, 1915–May 1, 1986) keith d. leonard Though she is not as well-known as some of her contemporaries and has not received as much critical attention, poet, editor, and activist Margaret Danner was a central figure in the emergence out of the Midwest of the Black Arts Movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. In her five volumes of poetry, Danner was among the first African American poets to celebrate a continuity between African American culture and West African art and to treat the multiple African, European, and American heritages of African American people as a source of strength for the artist, not a liability. Such affirmation was to become a defining ideal for the radical Black Aesthetic of the late 1960s. Also, Danner has consistently been praised for how, through her careful craft, she used distinctive subtlety, irony, and evocative imagery and symbolism to link ethnic cultural heritage, spirituality, and beauty as the manifestation of political resistance. Finally, as the editor of two anthologies and as the founder of two writers’ workshops in Detroit and Chicago, Danner joined poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Dudley Randall, and Haki Madhubuti in fostering community among African American writers in Detroit and Chicago and in bringing a new generation of African American writers to the public eye. In these ways, Danner offered an innovative sense that communal heritage was a source of imaginative and social freedom that could be realized through the spiritual meaning of artistic beauty, ideals that placed her at the center of the Chicago Renaissance. Multicultural arts and identity seemed always to be intertwined for Margaret Esse Danner, who was born to Caleb and Naomi Esse of Pryorsburg, Kentucky, on January 12, 1915. Although she would not publish poetry until much later in her life, Danner cultivated her poetic talent as early as junior high school, winning first prize in a poetry contest for her poem “The Violin” when she was in the eighth grade. The poem is an early instance of Danner’s career-long interest in using Stradivarius and Guanerius violins to symbolize her knowledge and appreciation of European art, from the violin to the ballet, alongside her innovative concerns about African culture. Margaret esse danner • 151 Danner’s public career as a poet began once she joined the socially conscious artistic community of Chicago, where her family had relocated by the time Danner had entered high school. She attended Englewood High School in Chicago before enrolling at Loyola and Roosevelt Universities. During this time, she was selected as one of the top ten African American poets as part of the University of Michigan’s contribution to “Patterns in American Culture.” Also, at the 1945 Midwestern Writers Conference at Northwestern University, Danner won second prize in the Poetry Workshop. She also received guidance and support from established editors and poets Karl Shapiro and Paul Engle, as well as African American writers Richard Wright, Owen Dodson, and Brooks, all of whom in turn had been influenced by sociologists such as Robert Park who saw culture as a means to social integration and equality. Such idealism about integration would soon have a place in Danner’s vision of ethnic affirmation. As a poet of place, Danner began at this time to use her neighborhood and her family as the foundation for her innovative ideals of heritage and community . She was married twice, first to Cordell Strickland and then to Otto Cunningham. She and Strickland have a child, Naomi, who is the mother of Sterling Washington Jr., Danner’s grandson and one of the chief inspirations for her poetry. He is the young boy in Danner’s many “Muffin” poems in which she shows not only her joy and pride in being a grandmother and her admiration for the child’s innocent wisdom, but also her sense that one role of poetry is in conveying wisdom to succeeding generations. Muffin becomes her ideal audience for her meditation on how artistic beauty is the principal means to affirm cultural heritage. These “Muffin” poems include “Black Power Language,” about a child’s perspective on Black Vernacular English, and “For Muffin,” about a gift to the child of an Ashanti stool as a token of race pride. Ethnic community becomes a family for Danner, and its heritage is mirrored in its commitment to beauty and cultural memory. Early in her career, like her fellow Chicago writers Brooks, Wright, Theodore Dreiser, and Carl Sandburg, Danner used the Chicago...