James Baldwin
James Baldwin (1924-1987) somehow managed to live most of his adult life in France (from age 24 until his death at 63) and yet became an essential voice of the 20th Century American experience. He seemed to master the living of something — playwriting, preaching, short story writing, novel writing, public speaking — and then to perfect it from a distance of the living. His level gaze, his deliberation of speech, his precise articulation all bestowed an air of authority and of wisdom that a passionate age had in short supply. His prose style is striking in its smooth power, its fluidity, and its threat or promise of an ambush of revelation. He was self-taught, never went to university, and found his deep well of influence in his reading.
He was born in Harlem, New York City. He never knew his father, but in an ambivalent way his step-father, a Baptist preacher, was a profound influence, as was his strong mother. In middle school he had the good fortune of having Harlem Renaissance novelist and poet Countee Cullen as a mentor. When he was attending the Dewitt Clinton High School in the Bronx he became a junior minister/boy preacher at the Fireside Pentacostal Assembly. He wrote and wrote and wrote during his teen years and read ten or a hundred times beyond what he wrote.
Too young for WWII, he left for France when he was 24 and, despite many trips back to the US and active involvement in the great social issues of the day, he essentially lived the expatriate life. His roll of friends is staggering: Malcolm X, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Nina Simone, Josephine Baker, Miles Davis, Ray Charles, Yves Montand, and Marguerite Yourcenar, among many others. He was a magnet, an engine for mid-century cultural life across borders around the world. He died of stomach cancer much, much too young.
Countee Cullen: Collected Poems
Countee Cullen: Collected Poems
In his early twenties, Countee Cullen emerged as a central figure in the tumultuous, defiant, intensely creative cultural movement now known as the Harlem Renaissance. Here is the most comprehensive collection of Cullen’s poetry ever assembled. It begins with his astonishing first book, Color (1925)—a debut that made him “famous, like Byron, overnight” (as H. L. Mencken put it). Cullen’s intricate, deceptively simple lyrics shocked some early readers with their frank explorations of racial, sexual, and religious themes. They have since become touchstones of the African American poetic tradition.
The collection follows the evolution of Cullen’s prodigious talents through Copper Sun (1927), The Ballad of the Brown Girl (1927), The Black Christ & Other Poems (1929), and The Medea and Some Poems (1935)—reprinted for the first time with the illustrations from the original editions. Also included are playful verses from his children’s book The Lost Zoo (1940); haunting late poems he intended to add to On These I Stand (1947) before his death; and dozens of uncollected poems, some never before published, which reveal an intense engagement with the politics of civil rights. Together, they afford an unprecedented occasion to revisit a dazzling and distinctive poetic voice.
Major Jackson is the author of three volumes of poetry: Holding Company, Hoops, and Leaving Saturn, and a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. He is the Richard Dennis Green and Gold Professor at the University of Vermont and poetry editor of the Harvard Review.
About the American Poets Project
Elegantly designed in compact editions, printed on acid-free paper, and textually authoritative, the American Poets Project makes available the full range of the American poetic accomplishment, selected and introduced by today’s most discerning poets and critics.