Volume 18, Issue 3
FRONT COVER: Romare Bearden
MONTAGE
In the 1970’s, Afro-American art and scholarship have developed a new sense of order and commitment. Younger artists and scholars are willingly embracing the traditions of their crafts; established figures who survived the 1960’s and its abuse of them are being honored and reassessed; poetry is far more artful than polemical; fiction is once again being written, which is cause enough for rejoicing. An anthology that documents this new spirit is sorely needed and CHANT OF SAINTS is designed to meet that need.
The fiction selections include work-in-progress by Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, and Gayl Jones, a story by James Alan McPherson, and a selection from Leon Forrest’s new novel, The Bloodworth Orphans (Random House, 1977). Complementing the fiction are interviews of Ellison, Forrest, and Jones, as well as of novelist Toni Morrison. Sequences of poems by Robert Hayden, Michael S. Harper, Sherley Williams, and Jay Wright also appear, accompanied by critical essays on Hayden’s most recent book, Angle of Ascent (Wilburn Williams, Jr.), and blues and contemporary poetry (Sherley Williams). The remaining essays discuss modern fiction (Chinua Achebe on Joseph Conrad; Robert Stepto on Richard Wright; Melvin Dixon on Claude McKay, Rene Maran, and Jacques Roumain); music (Frederick Turner on Big Jim Robinson; Kimberly Benston on John Coltrane); and cultural history (Mary Berry and John Blassingame on African survivals in slavery and slavery survivals in contemporary culture). Art by Romare Bearden, Richard Yarde, Richard Powell, and John Wilson, and photography by Lawrence Sykes enhance the volume.
As the selections suggest, CHANT OF SAINTS not only documents a decade but also studies the major achievements in Afro-American art and culture of the mid-century. The editors had in mind still another goal: The creation of a volume which, in its reflection of his interests and areas of teaching and writing, stands as a kind of Festschrift honoring the Dean of Afro-American letters, Sterling Allen Brown. In the 1970’s, Sterling Brown was not so much rediscovered as recovered. His books, lectures, articles, and poems (including “When De Saints Go Matching Home” from which this anthology takes its name) bind us to our culture as well as to him.
CHANT OF SAINTS is appearing in two parts, in the Autumn and Winter numbers (1977) of The Massachusetts Review. We are grateful to the editors of MR for this opportunity as well as for their help along the way.
Michael S. Harper
Robert B. Stepto
Table of Contents
CHANT OF SAINTS: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature Art and Scholarship
Dedication for Sterling Allen Brown
Backwacking, A Plea to the Senator, Fiction by Ralph Ellison
Study & Experience, an Interview with Ralph Ellison, by Robert Stepto and Michael Harper
Elegies for Paradise Valley, Poetry by Robert Hayden
A Sense of Story, Fiction by James Alan McPherson
Photographs by Lawrence Sykes
Bristol; Made Connections; Crossing Lake Michigan; Smoke, Poetry by Michael S. Harper
“Intimate Things in Place,” a Conversation with Toni Morrison, by Robert Stepto
Siras Bowens of Sunbury, Georgia, a Tidewater Artist in the Afro-American Visual Tradition, Non-Fiction by Robert Farris Thompson
Africa, Slavery, and the Roots of Contemporary Culture, Non-Fiction by Mary F. Berry and John Blassingame
Paintings by Richard Yarde
Richard Wright & Afro-American Literary Tradition, Non-Fiction by Robert Stepto
The Blues Roots of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry, Non-Fiction by Sherley A. Williams
A Music of the Streets, Non-Fiction by Frederick Turner
Someone Sweet Angel Child, Poetry by Shirley A. Williams
Bryant’s Ride, Fiction by Hilary Masters
Nantucket Oil Merchants and the American Revolution, Non-Fiction by George Rogers Taylor
The Village; Collecting, Poetry by Richard Frost
Contributors
Mary F. Berry is an historian and former Chancellor of The University of Colorado.
John W. Blassingame teaches history at Yale and is Editor-in Chief of the Frederick Douglass Papers.
Ralph Ellison is the author of Invisible Man, Shadow and Act, and numerous articles and short stories.
Robert Hayden is currently the Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.
James Alan McPherson has published a collection of stories, Hue and Cry, and Railroad Trains and Train People in American Culture with Miller Williams.
Toni Morrison is a Senior Editor at Random House.
Richard Powell, whose portrait etching of Richard Wright appears on the back cover, studied print-making at Morehouse College and Howard University.
Lawrence Sykes took the front cover photograph and those which appear later in this issue. He teaches photography and film making at Rhode Island College.
Robert Farris Thompson teaches Art History at Yale.
Frederick Turner‘s most recent book is Beyond Geography. He has edited The Viking Portable North American Indian Reader and Geronimo.
Sherley Williams chairs the Literature Department at University of California at San Diego.
Richard Yarde‘s work is included in the collections of the Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the museums of art at Smith and Wellesly.