The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of African American Poetry

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and ‘70s saw an outpouring of creative expression and a burgeoning of black-owned cultural outlets, including publishing houses, performance spaces, and galleries. Central to this movement was the work of its poets, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal, Haki Madhubuti, and Carolyn Rodgers. Through their collaborations with various editors, publishers, visual artists, critics, and fellow writers, this diverse group produced a dynamic body of books, anthologies, periodicals, and audio recordings, and helped develop new critical approaches to African American literary art.

The Black Arts Enterprise and the Production of African American Poetry examines the literary culture, including the small presses and literary anthologies in which BAM’s poets were first published. Focusing on the material production of Black Arts poetry, the book combines genetic criticism with cultural history to shed new light on the period, its publishing culture, and the collaborations of its participants. Howard Rambsy demonstrates how significant the circulation and format of black poetic texts-not simply their content-were to the formation of an artistic movement. The book also focuses on the roles that nationalist ideology, music, and figures such as Malcolm X and John Coltrane played in the formation of Black Arts discourse, and how that discourse served to reintroduce readers to poets such as Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Margaret Walker Alexander, and Phillis Wheatley.