The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was a national phenomenon in the decade 1965–1975. But, for a particular set of reasons, Chicago was where the movement reached its fullest realization. Other major industrial centers, such as Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh, along with such commercial centers as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, and New York, all produced significant manifestations of BAM. Chicago, however, was special for its strong, sustained, community-based artist collectives in all of the arts disciplines. I was fortunate to arrive in time to witness and participate in this unusual moment of creativity.
My graduation from New College (Sarasota, FL) in June 1974 marked the end of a complicated, transformative, and exhausting phase of my life. Looking forward to my next phase at the University of Chicago, I brought with me a broad, historically grounded knowledge in literature and philosophy, my two majors. Just as important, I had cofounded and edited a literary magazine, I was deeply engaged with contemporary writing, I had begun translating works by Spanish and Latin American authors, and I was especially excited to be heading for Chicago, a city well-suited to feed my burgeoning interests in jazz, blues, and classical music. On the other hand, New College was lacking in some areas. It had no Black faculty, hardly any courses on African American topics, and a Black student population that never rose above ten in any of my years there. Clearly, there remained much that I needed to learn.
That summer I wrote my first book of poems, A Suite for Broken Voices. Suite was never published, but two of the poems eventually appeared in my second book, Civil Rites, and subsequently in The Oxford Anthology of African American Poetry. Suite uses my experiences in Germany as vehicles for reflecting on my own African American identity and cultural heritage. The poems embody my enduring preoccupation with how thoughtful encounters with other people and with complex artifacts can be at once profoundly informative and personally transformative. My first poem in this mode, “Meditations in Smoke,” was written in my final weeks at New College—as I was writing my last undergraduate essay, on Greek pre-Socratic philosophy. I regard it as one of my most accomplished poems. Along with the two poems from Suite, it was eventually published in Civil Rites. These poems, as well as some essays and short stories that I wrote in 1974, constituted the portfolio that earned me admission to the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) Writers’ Workshop. To that we will return shortly.
My reading that summer included Amiri Baraka’ s Home (1966) and The Dead Lecturer (1964) ; James Baldwin’ s The Fire Next Time (1963) and No Name in the Street (1972) ; a volume of essays by Wilhelm Borchert, written in a manner somewhere between the Existentialists and the Beats ; Miguel de Unamuno’ s El sentido trágico de la vida (1912) ; and Federico García Lorca’ s Obras completas (1946), in the lovely leather-bound edition that came to me as a gift from a friend. All of these represented interests that I began to develop at New College and hoped to pursue in greater depth at Chicago.
The last week of September 1974, I arrived in Hyde Park. When I left Montgomery it was a cloudless, brilliant, eighty-five-degree afternoon. Landing in Chicago two hours later, I encountered a wholly different season. Dense, leaden clouds seemed to squat upon all the rooftops. This was my first experience of Chicago. I knew nothing of the Windy City except what I had gleaned from the memorable Carl Sandburg poem. When the taxi delivered me to the Ellis Avenue Apartments, the drizzle was fattening into frigid rain. I had to leave my luggage in the foyer at 5524 and walk, hatless, in this horizontal rain the three blocks to Reynolds Club to acquire my room keys. That miserable, lacerating trek was my introduction to what Chicagoans call “The Hawk. ” Over the ensuing six years, learning to be a Chicagoan taught me how much an Alabamian I truly was.
Within a few days an announcement was posted inviting new members to join the Chicago Review staff. I was intrigued. As mentioned, I had been cofounder of a literary magazine at New College and was excited by the prospect of working on the esteemed Chicago Review. As I began my graduate studies, I was anxious to maintain my passionate involvements with writing and music. Looking back forty-four years later, I can attest that joining CR was one of the best decisions I ever made.
CR was already a venerable magazine, having published adventurous and major works by leading American and international writers for more than two decades. It was therefore an ideal place to encounter new work and innovative writing by established and aspiring writers. Paradoxically, CR was a large little magazine compared to most literary quarterlies, in its number of pages and in the eclectic range of styles it embraced. Consequently, there was some jostling within the staff and also in relations with some aspiring contributors or would-be editors-at-large. Also, it was a true student publication. Most elite little magazines had a chief editor who was well established in the literary world and who had a long-term commitment to remain editor. By contrast, most CR editors were graduate students who departed after two or three years to finish writing the dissertation or to begin their first professional job. Thus, constant change was inherent in CR’ s culture. This meant that there was always room for new ideas and new initiatives. I relished such possibilities.
To read the rest of this essay in full, purchase a copy of CR 62.4/63.1/2.