Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin

by Philip Cushway (Editor & Compiler), Michael Warr (Poetry Editor)

Included in this extraordinary volume are the poems of 43 of America’s most talented African American wordsmiths, including Pulitzer Prize–winning poets Rita Dove, Natasha Tretheway, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tracy K. Smith, as well as the work of other luminaries such as Elizabeth Alexander, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. Included are poems such as “No Wound of Exit” by Patricia Smith, “We Are Not Responsible” by Harryette Mullen, and “Poem for My Father” by Quincy Troupe. Each is accompanied by a photograph of the poet along with a first-person biography. The anthology also contains personal essays on race such as “The Talk” by Jeannine Amber and works by Harry Belafonte, Amiri Baraka, and The Reverend Dr. William Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement, as well as images and iconic political posters of the Black Lives Matter movement, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. Taken together, Of Poetry and Protest gives voice to the current conversation about race in America while also providing historical and cultural context. It serves as an excellent introduction to African American poetry and is a must-have for every reader committed to social justice and racial harmony.


 

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Social Justice, Race, History, African American, Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 20, 2016

Reviews

[Sassy Sarah Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

The entirety of Of Poetry and Protest is gripping, moving, heartbreaking, and real. It's full of grit and truths that Americans sometimes look away from when it comes to the black community and this book expresses the plights of different sects within that community. It's an amazing collection and I tabbed so many poems. There were a handful of poems that I was personally not a fan (hence, why it is a 4.5 and not a 5-star rating), but there were so many wonderful poems that gripped me and moved me to my core. These are the type of poetry collections that should be gaining recognition, not stuff like milk and honey. This is the stuff that speaks for everyone and has truths that dig deep into the soul. I highly recommend checking Of Poetry and Protest out if you haven't because I promise you, it is an amazing experience.

I'm currently reading this book for my poetry class and this is just such a beautifully well-done novel. It's so wonderfully crafted and I'm so happy that I bought a copy instead of renting it. I'll be documenting the poems that I read in class.

Narrative: Ali, a poem in twelve rounds- Elizabeth Alexander
I absolutely adore the layout of this poem. It's genius and the poem itself is very different. It follows Muhammad Ali in twelve different sections. It has a lot of wonderful lines. I was really impressed with it.

Protest Poetry- Amiri Baraka
This is an essay on Baraka's stance on protest poetry and he has a very strong presence on the page. His spoken poems are even stronger. He was definitely an important cornerstone in the poetry movement. I'm glad I was introduced to him.

Fannie (of Fannie Lou Hamer)- Angela Jackson
I don't know. I wasn't a fan of this one. It didn't speak to me or move me. I just feel very indifferent towards it.

I Hear the Shuffle of the People's Feet- Sterling Plumpp
I really liked this piece. It's longer than a lot of the others in this collection, but it has a strong presence and touches on so many themes while painting this grand picture of the black struggle from a slave ship to Civil Rights. Really well done.

No Wound of Exit- Patricia Smith
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this poem. It made me cry. It hurt my heart and most of all I felt the picture that Smith was painting all the way down to the core of my soul. This is good poetry. I'm a fan of Smith for sure now.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology of protest poetry by Black writers is timely and a must-read. Each poet has one poem, accompanied by a short essay by the poet about their influences and why they write, as well as a black-and-white photo portrait. It's an education in 219 pages and a major political, historical and literary resource.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fine book, indeed, but the book's subtitle "From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin" led me to believe it was something slightly different.

43 African American poets each share a personal statement regarding their poetic development, influences, and intentions on a page facing their black-and-white photograph taken by Victoria Smith; followed by one of their poems. Additional photographs and artwork are interspersed throughout this modest coffee-table-sized book.

Too many favorites to name, here!
For example, Harryette Mullens' poem,
"We Are Not Responsible":

We are not responsible for your lost or stolen relatives.
We cannot guarantee your safety if you disobey our instructions.
We do not endorse the causes or claims of people begging for handouts.
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

Your ticket does not guarantee that we will honor your reservations.
In order to facilitate our procedures, please limit your carrying on.
Before taking off, please extinguish all smoldering resentments.

If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way.
In the event of a loss, you'd better look out for yourself.
Your insurance was cancelled because we can no longer handle
your frightful claims. Our handlers lost your luggage and we
are unable to find the key to your legal case.

You were detained for interrogation because you fit the profile.
You were not presumed to be innocent if the police
have reason to suspect you are carrying a concealed wallet.
It's not our fault you were born wearing a gang color.
It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights.

Step aside, please, while our officer inspects your bad attitude.
You have no rights that we are bound to respect.
Please remain calm, or we can't be held responsible
for what happens to you.

And this, from Kwame Dawes' personal statement:
"I think that a poet who writes love poems in the middle of war is a political poet.

Poetry teaches me how to make this lisping, stammering tongue of mine pray, preach, lament, bear witness, praise, adore, abuse, and voice the discoveries I make about the complexities of living in this world. I am not a political poet because to say I am political would limit both what poetry is and what politics is. I am a political being. I make poems. My poems never ignore who I am, and my poems help me to understand who I am."

Nikky Finney says in her personal statement:
"My poetics consist of Black holes. Black hips. Black hands. Black rice. Black love. Black noses. Black alphabets. Black water. Black wine. Black cast iron. Black tenderness. Black pencils. Black lips. Black notes. Black dance moves. Black ladybugs. Black air. Black cows. Black clavicles. Black feet. Black farmers. Black words. Black popcorn. Black sweet potatoes. Black motion. Black arms, folded and unfolded."

And Tyehimba Jess' poem,
"Infernal":

There is a riot I fit into,
a place I fled called the Motor City.
It owns a story old and forsaken
as the furnaces of Packard Plant,
as creased as the palm of my hand
in a summer I was too young to remember -
1967. My father ran into the streets
to claim a small part of my people's anger
in his Kodak, a portrait of the flame
that became our flag long enough
to tell us there was no turning back,
that we'd burned ourselves clean
of all doubt. That's the proof I've witnessed.
I've seen it up close and in headlines, a felony
sentence spelling out the reasons
my mother's house is now worth less
than my sister's Honda, how my father's worthy
rage is worth nothing at all. In the scheme
of it all, though, my kin came out lucky.
We survived, mostly by fleeing
the flames while sealing their heat
in our minds the way a bank holds
a mortgage - the way a father holds his son's hand
while his city burns around him... I almost forgot
to mention: the canary in Detroit's proverbial coal
mine who sang for my parents when they fled
the inferno of the South, its song
sweaty sweet with promise. I'm singing
myself, right now. I'm singing the best way
I know about the way I've run
from one fire to another. I've got a head full
of song, boiling away. I carry a portrait
of my father.

....just to share a small sampling....

[Camille McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a real shame that even as I was reading this anthology of poems by Black authors in response to the political situation for Black people in the US, we are currently in the middle of the Derek Chauvin murder trial and the police have shot and killed a twenty-year-old Black man with an air freshener and a thirteen-year-old child just this week. These poems were beautiful and inspirational, but I wish they didn't seem so timely, or timeless. Nothing has really changed since Trayvon Martin's death, except that people are more aware and will actually hit the streets in response to these murders. We need abolition of prisons and police, and we need it now.
The poems themselves, along with the short biographies of each poet, were inspirational, varied, and a great representation of the depth and versatility of the African American poetry tradition. I enjoyed reading about each poet's inspirations, and I am interested in reading more work from each of the poets featured. I am deeply thankful that this book was created.

[Soph Nova · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for the design alone, what a beautiful compilation; and, the collected poetry here was a nourishing and necessary survey across multiple generations of Black art.

“who of us could hold their heart intact
who of us could keep the vision so strong
that others become bright in its glow”

[Johanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of Poetry and Protest is profound, honest, and heartbreaking. The collection starts out with a few essays, and then the bulk of the book is a series of poems by African American poets. Each has a black and white photo of themselves, a brief introduction about themselves, their writing influences, and their philosophy on poetry, followed by their poem. There are also pictures and posters throughout. I'm not normally a poetry person - it just doesn't always connect well with me as a form of expression, but I am learning to gain an appreciation for it, and reading all of these poets talk about the power of poetry was helpful.

The poems I personally found most impactful or were my favorites for the message and/or style are these: New Day by Kwame Dawes, The Identity Repairman by Thomas Sayers Ellis, Left by Nikky Finney, New Rules of the Road by Reginald Harris, statement on the killing of patrick dorismond by Quraysh Ali Lansana, The Great Wait by Haki Madhubuti, I Hear the Shuffle of the People's Feet by Sterling Plumpp, No Wound of Exit by Patricia Smith, and Li'l Kings by Frank X. Walker.

And for my own notes, a few quotes that I wished I could highlight in my ebook:

"I didn't say it to him in a personal accusation. I said it because I wanted him to understand that none of us were really exempt from a responsibility to that moment by just coming to grieve the loss, there was no cleansing of responsibility. Remember what you did to make this moment realizable, what you did to participate in this, and be cautious about how you use your power."
~ Harry Belafonte

"I am not a political poet. I am a political person. And so my poetry becomes political. My poetry seeks to confound silence, and so by speaking into the silence, I am enacting something wholly political if one understands politics to be the business of how power is used in human society. Because I have been powerless and because I have been powerful, I am a political being."
~ Kwame Dawes

"Poetry teaches me how to make this lisping, stammering tongue of mine pray, preach, lament, bear witness, praise, adore, abuse, and voice the discoveries I make about the complexities of living in this world."
~ Kwame Dawes

His poem, New Day -
"...she was
scared, but proud, so giddy
with the wild beat
of her heart, knowing that
her country paused
for an instant and did
something grand, made a
black
man president, such a
miracle, such beautiful
magic."
~ "New Day," Kwame Dawes

"Great art has the power, not only to transform the present, but to transform the past, changing our ancestors' oppression into triumph."
~ Tori Derricotte

"I didn't understand in high school when my classmates camouflaged themselves and went out into the woods to shoot and kill something as beautiful as a doe. I hated guns and I still do. I wanted to aim at something that I didn't have to kill. I wanted to build up something that might make someone reconsider something they thought they felt absolutely sure about. I wanted to use my hands to wrestle something into the world and not out of the world."
~ Nikky Finney

"Cruelty is caused by a failure of the imagination. The inability to assign the same feelings and values to another person that you harbor in yourself."
~ Sonia Sanchez

"When you realize you are in the world to create, to be in love with Truth and Beauty, then only death becomes the thing that stops you."
~ Lamont B. Steptoe

[Rebecca Chekouras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bright is the ring of words when the right [voice¹] rings them, said Robert Louis Stevenson in another context but no less true here in this focused survey of contemporary Black American poets. My daily exposure to poetry stopped decades ago with the completion my formal education. That changed twelve years ago when I encountered the slam poetry scene in Oakland and Berkeley. The thrill of language worked hard, the plasticity of language and form to reveal emotion, to refine one’s attention, to stretch conceptualization and comprehension, drew me back to the primacy of voice over page.

Of Poetry & Protest From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin further cements a belief in the artist as belle weather, witness, seer, sayer. As the title makes very clear, editors Philip Cushway and Michael Warr focus their collection on the fault line of American democracy—the inability of the dominant white, cis-gendered, heteronormative, ostensibly Christian culture to look at who they are and what they do. This collection succeeds in demonstrating the startling power of a single voice to confront a false mythology of greatness and pin the truth on it. It is worth saying, though, these poets are not writing to educate or persuade white people. They are writing their experience. They are putting their lives on the page.

Read these artists out loud. Poems are sound. And not just received sound. This work is meant to be spoken as much as heard. Meant to come out of the reader’s mouth as an initiation to the work yet to be done after all this time. And read them more than once. Read them aloud again and again until self-conscious ego falls away and it is just the reader and the words and the collapse into another way of seeing and experiencing.

The book has a textbook/coffee table book feel in dimension and heft of glossy page and in the way it falls and stays open. Inviting. Meant to be on permanent display, to be seen and touched and opened at random and thumbed. To be returned to again and again. And the reader is meant to be struck full force by each random encounter. Artists are our witnesses to raw history not yet cured by time. They say things politicians cannot. Trust the artist over the politician.

Of Poetry & Protest From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin also would make a great text for middle and high school students.

¹ Stevenson said “man,” but that was then and this is now.

[Ben Truong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin is an anthology of poetry about the black experience and was collected and edited by Philip Cushway. There are many themes of this anthology, but the major one is social justice, protest, and black history.

For the most part, I really like these contributions. This collection of poems and essays from 43 African-American poets, with photographs by Victoria Smith, functions as a platform for some of America's most prominent black poets to share how they came to poetry, how poetry functions in the social milieu, and how poems can address social justice, protest, and history.

The anthology largely focuses on established, prominent poets writing in accepted modes, though a handful of younger poets round it out, along with quotes, stand-alone essays, and art displayed prominently along with the portraits. The poetry itself addresses topics such as slavery and reconstruction, the civil rights era, Martin Luther King Jr., Move, Malcolm X, France’s May 1968 protests, Obama's presidency, police murders, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

All in all, Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin is a wonderful collection of poems that captures black history extremely well.

[Tracy Middlebrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a flipping gorgeous book. It's large coffee table sized, but paperback and feels fantastic to hold. So much care went into the creation and curation of this collection of poems. There are beautiful and evocative headshots of each poet, photos full of life and movement and personality. And this giant full paged photo precedes each poem, accompanied by a mini autobiography, where each poet recounts their life's history with reading and writing. It's really powerful. Themes emerge. Humanity is displayed on every page. Raw and joyful and angry and sorrowing and celebrating and fighting back and offering succor. The poems are often great, and so varied in style and themes. It's a really wonderful collection.

[Garrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a incredible book of poetry! I read this in preparation for a week-long teachers institute with the Idaho Humanities Council (which was incredible—transformative, really), and was really glad I saved it for last. The poems in the book really set the tone for what we talked about all week: discovering and paying attention to those voices that may be disenfranchised or ignored or rejected and recognizing their humanity and power. I’d recommend this to anyone wanting to empathize with the African American experience. Or to anyone just wanting to read some fantastic poetry.

[Cesar Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woah. Just Woah! This book was put up on display at our Library for Black History Month and at the recommendation of a Co-worker I gave it a read. I have kept this book for over three weeks slowly pouring over each page! This anthology of African American/Black Poets and Writers is just amazing. The compilation of poems and essays that were chosen were really thought provoking. I would recommend this to anyone to read.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a compilation of different poets, their poems and information about them. The book, given by the title is full of information about the frustration of the racial climate in the United States. Every poet is African american and I enjoyed most learning about each poet and what significant life events have impacted them.

Poetry
middle -highschool. even upper elementary school if used in an appropriate way.

[Sherry Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick note: I was caught up in the bios of the poets as much, if not more, than the poetry. Names so familiar. As a two time Cave Canem participant (wasn't able to make my last year), many of the poets are familiar to me, some whom I got to study with at Cave Canem. Kudos to the important work black writers are contributing, their witness and insights so impactful.

[lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this to soothe and inspire yourself in these grim days. I loved "New Rules of the Road" by Reginald Harris, "Rose Colored City" by Major Jackson, "Tallahatchiue Lullaby, Baby" by Douglas Kearney, and "Duende" by Tracy K Smith.

But my most favorite poem from this book, one that I will carry in my heart going forward was "I Hear the Shuffle of the People's Feet" by Sterling Plumpp.

[Kate Mester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required for MS/HS collections. Powerful pieces, and you learn snippets about each poet (some of whom were new to me). Shared a few poems with 7th graders, they appreciated them, but age-appropriateness varies by selection. Pieces that moved me the most: "No Wound of Exit", "statement on the killing of patrick dorismond", and "Li'l Kings"

[Mela · Rating 5 out of 5]

black poetry matters. "for the poet writing in america today, few of us have taken a stance - even rhetorically - against the grandmasters of violence in our neighborhoods scored for MTV. maybe we know language has also betrayed us, but i wish to write poems that say, No we'll never let language subvert or diminish the content of our character." - yusef komunyakaa

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

In addition to poems reflecting a wide variety of styles and subjects (intimately personal to majestically political, past to present), I also enjoyed the first person biographical narratives each poet wrote. For every one, it also included the story of their identity as a poet or writer, and the names of those who influenced them. It gave me many poets to add to my library checkout list...

[Charity Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential

This book is a wonderful level 101 to the who's who from the Black Arts Movement with several more modern contemporaries also featured. I craved to see a more variegated spread of poets and writers of color from different walks of life (including Libya folk) but I was still moved by the short bios and poems.

[Mills College Library]

811.00808 O31 2016

[Tasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, wonderful collection.

[M. Gaffney · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a powerful collection of poets, artists, and activists. A truly remarkable read. I'm glad I took my time.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a compilation! Loved the profiles of all the writers, some of their poems not so much. But still a must read for the depth and breadth of talent.

[Joshua Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding collection of deeply moving poems.

[Robin M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing works. The different perspectives of what protest and poetry and just living look like are amazing, and the history and all the different voices are insightful and powerful. One of my favorite things about this book are all of the recommended reading in each of the poet's sections.

[Abbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was inspiring, hard, beautiful and dreadful all at the same time. As all good poetry does, it stirs up conviction in your own soul as this country still processes so much of the racial tension and atrocities that continue today. I loved how each poem was prefaced with a photo and background of the poet. Such amazing stories and beautiful people. Had to stop reading because had to turn back into the library, but definitely worth a read and would be a beautiful coffee table book.

[Doni · Rating 2 out of 5]

More of a coffee table kind of book.