A Color Barrier? - African-American Poetry
Do African-Americans write poetry? Why are there no blogs out there by African-American poets? Why is there no "African-American Poetry" equivalent to this blog? (And by "African-Americans," I mean "black," of course. Just using the term "African-American" because it sounds and looks similar to "Asian-American.")
Obviously, I'm mistaken that there are no blogs by African-American poets. At least I think that I am. Prove that I am mistaken. As the very sane Tom Cruise might say, "Show me the blog!"
I hesitate to make a socioloeconomic, historical, and/or cultural arguments that there are fewer African-Americans, on average, that have easy access to computers and e-mail and blogs, and therefore, that accounts for the lack of African-American bloggers. After all, there are plenty of African-Americans with easy access to computers and blogs.....But that still leaves us with a puzzle.
Obviously, I'm mistaken that there are no blogs by African-American poets. At least I think that I am. Prove that I am mistaken. As the very sane Tom Cruise might say, "Show me the blog!"
I hesitate to make a socioloeconomic, historical, and/or cultural arguments that there are fewer African-Americans, on average, that have easy access to computers and e-mail and blogs, and therefore, that accounts for the lack of African-American bloggers. After all, there are plenty of African-Americans with easy access to computers and blogs.....But that still leaves us with a puzzle.
posted by Roger Pao at 4:41 PM
8 Comments:
http://www.slanttruth.kaelliott.com/
http://gwennotes.blogspot.com/
This exchange itself demonstrates why African-Americans might benefit from blogs---access to information and discourse. People can make their own decisions, but we need information (or at least the breadth of experience and patience to make rational decisions). But when legislative, economic and sociopolitical realities precede the "fun" (if we can call it that) of learning online, it's a tough road ahead. But I sure hope we get to it.
I wonder what the folks at Cave Canem would have to say about this discussion. I would love a Komunyakaa guest blog visit sometime. He is, I believe, still at Princeton.
http://www.cavecanempoets.org
As far as African-American poet bloggers, no, there aren't too many of us. A lot of what Viperteq says is right on the money, but at least as far as poet bloggers are concerned, I suspect that there are other cultural factors at work as well. For instance, go to any major city in America and you can find 100s of African-American slam poets. I may be wrong here, but most poet bloggers out there (myself included, I must admit), aren't going to give much credence to slam poetry. It's more complicated than that, I know. A thought to ponder, however.
Now, if you move outside of poetry and into political (and other) blogging, the number of American-Americans start to rise. Off the top of my head:
Steve Gilliard
Pam's House Blend
Professor Kim
Oliver Wilis
Robert George
LaShawn Barber
Intelligence Squad
Ascent Blog
to name a few. And there are many more out there. We're still mightily under-represented in blogland, but we are starting to grow.
Oh and I'm not sure how I forgot to mention E. Ethelbert Miller's:
http://eethelbertmiller1.blogspot.com/
Roger, there are a number of bloggers listed in in the Links page of the Cave Canem website, here. You'll need to scroll down in the page a ways to come to the links that are specifically blogs (as distinguished from plain websites, etc.).
I can't say for certain that all of the poets who are linked there are African-American, but it seems likely that all or more are, inasmuch as Cave Canem is a website concentrating on poetry by African-American poets.
Well, I've been waiting to think of something profound to add, but nothing has come to me yet.
In the meantime, everyone, thanks a lot for your comments and blog recommendations! It seems that there are a lot of African-American poets blogging, even if this fact appears to fly under the radar sometimes.
You've inspired me, Roger. I just started a new blog equivalent to your blog called Folk Say.
Check it out.
Hey Kevin, wow, that's cool. I've never inspired anyone to set up their own blog before. I'm honored.
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