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Celebration at dark : poems
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"Smith melds an array of influences - from the French Symbolists to W. H. Auden and Wallace Stevens - into his own unmistakable voice, moving powerfully from the compressed, dark lyrics of his pre-World War II poetry ("Quail in Antumn") to experiments with a long, free-verse line in the 1960's ("The Tin Can"). Here are memorable lyrics that capture the horror of World War II ("Dark Valentine: War Poems") and hilarious light verse ("The Tall Poets") that exhibits the wit that has enlivened even Smith's darkest works. Previously uncollected recent poems reveal the poet's tremendous range, as he moves from discussing the ironies of age in "The Shipwreck" to forging the dramatic and moving intensity of "The Cherokee Lottery," which deals with the forced removal of American Indian tribes east of the Mississippi."--Book jacket.
619593
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"Here at last is Pauli Murray's powerful poem, 'Dark Testament,' and forty-nine other of her poems, collected between two covers. Virtually hidden for 22 years while its author pursued her destiny as a civil rights and women's rights champion and, at the same time as an attorney and professor of law, 'Dark Testament' speaks so eloquently of the plight of black Americans that it might have been composed yesterday. Dr. Murray won her badge of honor as a civil rights activist in the Forties -- long before the Freedom Rides -- when she was arrested and jailed in the South for refusing to be segregated and when she led student sit-ins in all-white restaurants in the nation's capital. As a poet she was a protegé of Stephen Vincent Benét and was encouraged by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Starr Untermeyer, Lillian Smith, and many others. The title poem of this volume inspired Morris Milgram, who wrote the introduction, to start a career of developing genuinely integrated housing. Now over 13,000 people live in open housing owned or built by firms Milgram organized; and this might never have begun but for Pauli Murray's 'Dark Testament,' which taught Milgram that the ghetto perpetuates black unfreedom"--From back of dust jacket.
657222