In his New York Times obituary of October 10, 2001, Calvin C. Hernton was described as “a scholar, critic and poet whose work explored the terrain where American race relations collide with American sexual politics.” He wrote several influential books on social and literary criticism. His friends included luminaries like Toni Morrison, Paul Blackburn, Alice Walker and bell hooks. However, his poetry, much of which was published by Ishmael Reed, has fallen into obscurity. Edited by David Grundy and Lauri Scheyer, Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton aims to revive his legacy and cement his reputation as an important voice. This selected volume skillfully guides the reader through his biography, his poems, and his analysis of his own work and experiences.
Hernton called many places home over his busy, productive life. Born in Tennessee, he lived in New York City and London for extended periods before settling in Oberlin, Ohio to teach at the college. His work and writing life were equally diverse: he wrote a ground-breaking sociological study called Sex and Racism in America, published in 1965; he was a social worker in New York while being mentored by Langston Hughes; he co-founded the Umbra Poets Workshop – a collective of black writers on Manhattan’s Lower East Side; he taught at the progressive Antiuniversity in London; he wrote a major analysis of female black writers called The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers: Adventures in Sex, Literature, and Real Life (1987); and his three plays were performed on Broadway and elsewhere. During these years he was also writing verse, some of which was published in Evergreen Review, Essence and Black Scholar. Although this new volume focuses on his poetry, it also includes an informative introduction by the editors, a lively forward by Ishmael Reed (“He had a touch of the meshuggeneh”), a timeline of Hernton’s life, and several artist statements by Hernton – all providing compelling and crucial context for his free and blank verse.
Selected Poems organizes Hernton’s pieces thematically (rather than chronologically), so readers may observe trends and habits across his career. There are highlights from his three collections: The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong: An Epical Narrative of the South (1964), Medicine Man: Collected Poems (1976), and The Red Crab Gang and Black River Poems (1999). The volume also organizes his poems around the three locations he called home: New York City, London, and Oberlin. These selections are book-ended by his early work (which emphasizes his move from the south to New York) and previously unpublished pieces.
One may easily identify the key tropes in Hernton’s pieces, such as his interest in revolution and progress. Race is the critical topic throughout, beginning with his earliest poems. His dedication to social justice and racial equality often permeates his efforts as a poet. For example, in “Young Negro Poet,” he writes:
Young Negro poet
came from ’way down South,
up North,
New York City,
couldn’t write so well,
folks back home had lied–
what a pity, what a pity.
…
Wake up jack-legged poet!
Wake up dark boy from ’way down South!
Wake up out of Central Park –
wash your face in the fountain water,
take a long stretch,
light a cigarette butt, and walk defiantly
through the streets of Harlem Town.
This early piece displays some of Hernton’s signature qualities: his interest in place, particularly contrasting the north and south; a self-deprecating but assertive speaker; and the use of rhythmic declarative statements strongly tied to the spoken word tradition.
These qualities recur throughout his later work, especially in his epic long-form poems, like “The Coming of Chronos to the House of Nightsong,” which was written from the perspective of a southern white woman facing the social and power dynamic changes in the wake of Reconstruction after the Civil War. The speaker, Eleanor Nightsong, is fixated on her southern home. She declares herself god, and yet she doubts her ability to face change. In fact, she downright refuses — “And I am not confused / I am not confused / And I do, indeed, dare.” Hernton does not hesitate to portray her stubborn racism, which is horrific but also darkly humorous in its stupid audacity (“Oh, I am One Century toward God and Eternal life! // Oh, I Eleanor of Nightsong, am going to live forever!”). Hernton’s choice to use blank verse lends an aura of performance to the piece – the sing-song of iambic pentameter carrying the reader through Eleanor’s declarations.
Just as “The Coming of Chronos …” is an indictment of southern plantation culture with so many details steeped in that setting, location is hugely important throughout Hernton’s career. Often, his speaker’s experience as a black man in the south is contrasted with experiences in other places like New York City and London. That is not to say his work is not critical of social life in those metropolitan locations, but that his work about them is filled with a stronger sense of hope and possibility. Take for example this funny little poem set in NYC called “Street Scene”:
I met my dream
Walking down the street–
Hello, Dream!
Dream spoke back:
“Go to Hell, sonofabitch!”
The speaker is walking through New York – a dream come true – filled with hope, but the city also harshly reproaches him. This ironic turn is both funny and genuinely moving.
His poems about London and Oberlin project a similar mixed tone of wonderment and skepticism. In a short biography reprinted in this text, Hernton says of his time in the UK, “When I left America I was to the left of Martin Luther King; when I return, for I shall, and soon, I will be to the left of Malcolm X and Fanon.” This radicalization unifies his London pieces, which highlight discomfort with British culture. In “An Unexpurgated Communique to David Henderson,” his speaker says, “Every night I get stoned in the Seven Stars among the wretched / of the earth / and plot the downfall of empires.” Similarly, in “Game Life, London, 1967,” he laments:
In my London neighborhood which is not my
neighborhood
I sit in the Free House For Public Drinking
Trying to connect anything with anything.
I want to run up to the people
And embrace them
I want to let them know
That they are dying –
By including biographical note alongside their selections, the editors illuminate Hernton’s psyche and concerns through the progressive stages of his writing.
Hernton’s poems about Oberlin are gentler, though they still have some edginess. It makes sense that the poet lived in the Ohio town for over 20 years until his death because these pieces have a lot of affection mixed with his observations. While he felt alienated in London, he wrote about Oberlin as a home. In “Oberlin, Ohio,” the speaker describes the town as “A pretty good old soul / Between two traffic lights.” Yet, in “Oberlin Negroes,” the speaker says:
Black people
In Oberlin Ohio
Still say
“Colored.”
The white people
Don’t know
What to say.
Perhaps because he felt more settled in Oberlin or because of his growing maturity, the pieces from this later era have less bite, though they still feel equally vital. His poems, from any era, are stalwart in their dedication to reflecting on place, especially the safety or lack thereof for black people in those places.
It is a challenge to capture the breadth and complexity of Hernton’s writing in a few paragraphs. The varied assortment of epic poems and short pieces from across his four decades as a poet make a compelling case for why his writing should be widely read. The volume has much to share about his life as a black man in the late 20th-century. Hernton was a remarkable intellect, revolutionary, and creator; his poetry is full of rage and celebration. “Calvin Hernton was more than a performance artist,” writes Ismael Reed in his introduction. “He was b brilliant on the page, too, which is why I published him.” Reed names T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and the scriptures as key influences for Hernton. Perhaps it is best to let Hernton sum up his own career with a few lines from a previously unpublished poem, “A Canticle for the 1960s.” As we see throughout this book, he is always the best and last word on his work: “Joy you gonna see / Joy you gonna see / Joy for the dead / And joy for the living.”
[Published by Wesleyan University Press on August 1, 2023, 256 pages, $24.95 paperback]