PHBW DOCUBLOG
April 4, 1997
Remarks for panel “Making Black Literary Anthologies: Past
and Present” at University of Wisconsin-Madison symposium “Canonizing African
American Literature: Black Anthologies in America 1843-1996”
Memory,
according to current thinking in neuroscience, can be talked about as long-term
and short-term. In light of the
probability of having these two kinds of memory, we might consider The Poetry
of the Negro (1949, 1974) edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps as an
anthology designed for long-term memory.
On the other hand, Black Fire
(1968) edited by LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal, which did not pretend to
ideological neutrality was short-term.
Anthologies assist us in remembering and in forgetting. They remain quite essential for the
reconstruction of group memory, the architectural work that use pieces of the
past to create for the present matter for remembering. The forgotten aspects of literature never
come forth as they were. They come
through the filter of distance, through the lens of the editor looking toward a
future. We editors have to worry about
what we help people to remember and to forget.
When I compiled
Black Southern Voices (1992) with
John Oliver Killens and Trouble the
Water: 250 Years of African American
Poetry (1997), the notion that I was participating in canon formation did
not dance in my head. If people want to
see these two anthologies as part of a canon-making effort, they are welcome to
do so. Black Southern Voices is Mr. Killens’ anthology; it was his idea; I
was called in to help, and completed the work after his death. The anthology was shaped according to his
ideas about the social responsibility of artistic voices, and I thank Keneth
Kinnamon for saying this morning that the anthology gives credibility to the
idea of regional difference. The phrase “social
responsibility of artistic voices” (open to multiple disputes and debates) is
an accusing finger, eliciting dread among the clerics who have given up hair
shirts for the comfort of cardinal red silk.
In a nutshell, Black Southern Voices casts some light on the South and
the Black South, reminding us of the origins of oppositions, of where everyday
opposition is real. With all its
imperfections, Black Southern Voices
is there for discovery or rediscovery.
Perhaps it reminds us of the importance of attending to African American
writing in opposition to a narrow attention to literature (as literature is
variously defined), a subset of writing.
Trouble the Water only deals
with poetry. I was always mindful in
making the anthology of Eugene Redmond’s Drumvoices:
The Mission of Afro-American Poetry.
Perhaps the anthology has a mission.
Perhaps it records a wondrous accident that black poetry addresses so
many different audiences at any given time.
It reminds people of the rage and sweep and placidity of water, the
ineluctable necessity of water. Thus,
its title.
As I
mentioned to William Andrews yesterday, there is a secret design in this
anthology, a call and response pattern based not on textuality or
intertexuality so much as on historically (narratively) situated
responses. My own vision of African
American poetry and poetic tradition is invested in memory. My subjectivity is invested in preservation
and in what the poetry induces us to do for a future. The anthology is a sampler. When people complain that something is
missing, I hope they will go out and read that something. It was also important in making this book
that young people who can spend $150.00 for tennis shoes have it at the
affordable price of $6.99.
Perhaps
my mission as editor was to wade in the water and to practice a nice Southern
madness of helping others to make trouble, so we might all get wet with wisdom.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
Lawrence Durgin Professor of Literature
Tougaloo College
