“The Sea in Me…
The Sea in You”*
Etheridge Knight, Community Poet
As I read through letters, poem and essay drafts, cards, newspapers, and flyers in the archives, I discovered Etheridge Knight the Community Poet. Here was not only the prison poet or Black Arts Movement poet as he is commonly hailed, but someone who lived in the Word, who made and found communities that mapped onto his identities, who could connect with anyone through the sharing of feelings. For Knight, the personal became public and the personal public as he poeted through his deepest suffering and greatest blisses. He took a specific experience — Black, formerly incarcerated, junkie — and made it universal through speaking in ways people could understand and by evoking what he called “the universality of feelings.” He found community by speaking his poems among the people not only on college campuses and in poetry reading audiences, but in prisons, high schools, workshops, political affinity groups, family, and friends. They recognized the intensity, joy, love, and hurt in his poetry in their hearts or their own lives, and enjoyed both his work and his company.
Audiences found inspiration in Knight because he was confident and charismatic, he stood in his identity as a Black man, and he crafted people-centered and people-seeking poetry. Knight established the Free Peoples’ Poetry Workshops where he encouraged others to write from their own experiences and to connect to others through the universality of feelings. In turn, Knight found inspiration from these interactions: he hosted readings and workshops to test his work with audiences and revised poems after speaking them, sometimes decades later. For Knight, community was the notion of being and working among the people, experiencing mutual interchange of influence, and forging connections across lines of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, class, age, and occupation.
I hope that these pieces will offer a deeper insight into Etheridge Knight, as someone whose life and work resides in community, whose poems brought him not only artistic recognition, but also the recognition and admiration of his poetic peers, elders, and descendants. I also hope that these pieces might reinvigorate existing and inspire new communities of the poetic Word, centered around the universality of feelings.
*”The Sea in Me…The Sea in You” is drawn from Knight’s poem “Belly Song,” published in Belly Song and Other Poems, Broadside Press, 1973
tour the exhibit
Knight wrote this letter to fellow Black Arts Movement poet Amiri Baraka, one of the founders of the movement after Baraka established the Black Arts Repertory Theater in Harlem in 1965. In the letter, Knight places himself as one part of a larger movement to reclaim the authority and sociopolitical relevance of Black oral poetry traditions—here called folklore—from white folklorists.
In this piece, Knight explains his political project as a poet: “ME, I maintain that folklore existed in the past and that it exist now; As a ‘Toast teller’ I’m saying, and assuming /my/ Authority, by the practicing of the Poetry right now, street corners, jails, clubs, churches, lodges, campuses—where/ever Black Folks talk. Therefore, the Black Folklore that’s going /on/ right now has social and political relevance” [emphasis Knight’s]. Through these declarations in this letter, he intends to recenter the concept of community in the creation and reception of Black poetry by speaking among and drawing inspiration from Black communities across time and locality.
—Transcription—
Dear Amiri,
Hope your journey to “far places” went well. Where’d you go, dude? I /be/ well, and working here in the mts — not being Moses, I’m satisfied just to get some words/down on paper. No, fellow, I’m not “doing all that toasting” and I don’t know if my book will be “literary” — all I know is I’m taking back the Authority for our Oral Tradition that’s been mainly stolen/exploited [by] the white boy “folklorists,” beginning with Roger Abrams — actually before him. Dig, “they” get their Authority by maintaining that Folklore only exist in the past [note on side reads: thereby any relevant social and political implications] — 30–40 years ago—”they are collectors”–ME, I main-tain that folklore existed in the past and that it exist now; As a “Toasteller” I’m saying, and assuming /my/ Authority, by the practicing of the Poetry right now, street corners, jails, clubs, churchs, lodges, campuses—where/ever Black Folks talk. Therefore, the Black Folklore that’s going/on/right now has social and political relevance.
[Another note on side]
Run Jesse Run!
Word’n
Wild beast stalk your steps!
O grab Our Sword of Allah!
Dig, I wanna include your poem on “The Dozens” and that piece H. Rap (?) Brown ran/down. It’s in an anthology but for the life of me, I can’t remember which/one.
Will be in NYC-Sept 7-9th – Can we hook/up/for a minute? -(OVER)
This February 19, 1986 newspaper clipping comes from The Equinox, a student paper at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire.
As Cowette describes in the article, “Toasts are long narrative poems, usually in rhyming couplets memorized and told by black men to each other in certain social gatherings.” Although there are familiar plots and structures, toast telling also relies on skills of strong improvisation, timing, and personal flair, making the oral tradition musical or theatrical.
Knight maintained his initial connection to the oral and communal aspects of toasts through his practice and theory of speaking poems among the people, whether fellow poets in workshops or to audiences during poetry readings.
—Transcription—
Toast teller turned to poet
Knight writes on prison life
By COLLEEN COWETTE
Equinox Reporter
Etheridge Knight feels like he has died twice–once in the Korean War and once in prison. but 18 years after he was brought back to life the second time, Knight is praised as the best contemporary Afro-American poet.
The first time his poetry was published in 1968, Knight was an inmate in Indiana State Prison. His work was praised by black writers and critics as an excellent example of “Blackness” in art.
“I died in Korea from a shrapnel wound and narcotics resurrected me,” Knight said.
In 1960, Knight was given a 10-25 year indeterminate sentence for a robbery committed in Indianapolis Indiana, to support his habit. In November of 1968 he was granted parole. It was in prison that Knight found poetry.
“I died in 1960 from a prison sentence,” he said, “and poetry brought me back to life.”
Born in 1939 in Corinth, Mississippi, Knight grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, with 4 sisters and 2 brothers. He frequented the streets, bars and poolrooms, quitting school after the 8th grade and running away. It was from the men in these places that he learned various toasts and other repartee. Toasts are long narrative poems, usually in rhyming couplets, memorized and told by black men to each other in certain social gatherings.
Knight became a master toast reciter while in prison. It was then that he began to apply his understanding of toasts to written poetry. According to Knight, toasts were used to pass the time while in prison.
“It’s a form of social intercourse,” he said, “the same way that guys rap now.”
By 1963, Knight had begun writing and submitting poetry for publication. According to the poet, he sent out poems for three or four years and all were rejected. During this time, Knight made connections with black poets, writers and publishers. One in particular, was Gwendolyn Brooks, who visited Indiana state prison for a reading, read some of Knight’s work and began writing him with advice.
“She was the first one who got me
Continued on page 3
Knight became poet in spite of time in prison
Continued from page 3 center
when I read her poems,” Knight said.
Knight’s first two books, Poems for Prison and Black Voices from Prison deal with prison life and the emergence of the black power ethic. Most of Knight’s poems are biographical – some even containing his name.
“Ideas are not the source of poetry,” he said. “It’s feelings. Sometimes the source of a poem may be an idea. For me it’s passion and feeling. Then the intellect comes into play. It starts in the belly and then into the head.”
“The way I see it in any creative writing, the first address is to the poet,” he said. “When you write letters to someone you talk in you head. Then you address other selves with the same historical experience. You use a language, especially in poetry, that is evocative, has nuances and inflection.”
Most, if not all, of Knight’s poetry is aimed at black males, for which he has been criticized.
“I don’t see it (poetry) being as narrow as it was in the 60’s,” he said. “My poetry is also important to white people because it invokes feelings. The feelings are common whether or not the situations that create the feelings are common. I might feel fear in a small town in Iowa. You might be afraid if you got off the subway in Harlem. It’s the same fear but the situations are different.”
“My poems are open to everybody. I don’t think it will address the general audience as clearly though. The language and my impulse is black males about love.”
“If you’re trying to address everyone out there, you have to use a catch-all phrase. You can’t do that with poetry. You’re trying to be specific.”
According to Knight, universality can be a trap.
“It’s a position that’s pushed by a certain group who has an interest in things staying the way they are,” he said. “The only universality I see is the universality of feelings.”
For Knight, his poetry is not complete until it is read aloud to an audience. “Poems are made up to be said aloud,” Knight said. “A poet is primarily a sayer, a singer, a chanter. The written word is an extension of the spoken word. Punctuation itself connotes an oral.”
“I don’t know if I’d define myself as a poet. I already had an audience before prison. I was already a toast teller. Prison kills creativity. I’m a poet in spite of prison.”
For now, Knight lives in Boston writing down the feelings he longs to tell the world.
Image: Etheridge Knight for Equinox taken by Donald C. Himsel
Image description: Knight holds a book of poetry open on his palm as he stands at a podium, reciting at a poetry reading
Knight’s essay titled “The Belly Dance” provides insight into why he began writing. Making up poems, as he often termed his creative process, was a way to pull himself together while in solitary confinement and after his release as someone facing personal disjointment.
“The Idea of Ancestry,” he writes was a “desperate attempt, and urge, to grasp a sense of my/self, of who I /was/–right then.” Knight argues that this process also creates a poetic authority that “is based upon personal–and sometimes-collective–history as it is revealed by the poet to the Reader or Listener.”
For Knight, “genealogical poetry” involves revisiting the paths one has already walked, re-imagining them, and understanding one’s present situation as part of, not only the result of, their past experiences. Genealogical poetry is therefore a way of mending the self: recalling the memories and histories of the poet and rooting them in the body as a grounding practice.
This essay also highlights Knight’s belief that poems live in community. Grounding practices like genealogical poetry also give the poet the freedom—and authority—to be and to produce art among the people, and in performance “a Leap is made, a Dance begins, the Art happens, A Communication exists between the poet, the poem, and the people.”
—Transcription—
[Handwritten]
For The Dance Starts in the Belly
-Villon
I made/up/”The Idea of Ancestry” in the early sixties when I was in prison, in the Belly of the Beast. The initial creative/impulse for the poem occurred and many of the lines/were/made/up/during one of my stints in Solitary Confinement. Being in prison is in itself a trip; and/being/in “The Hole,” the prison within the prison is like having one foot in an emotional grave and the other on a banana peel. After some time in “The Hole,” not knowing night from day, I began to lose track of the days and weeks; I became disoriented–out of touch with my/self. So I started to RE/MEMBER: my grade school classmates, guys I’d/been/in the army with, and my FAMILY, most of all.
[DEVELOP] (I think Memory and Imagination [Develop]/are/the Parents are Creativity. And in my situation with such a bleak future facing me, Imagination, if not dead altogether, was definitely crippled.) Memory was all I had to drawn on. So I started to making/up/the lines and phrase out loud, memorizing them. I later finished the poem back in my cell.
It seems to me that “The Idea of Ancestry” belongs to a body of poems that I have come to call Genealogical. I, of course, didn’t have the term in mind when I made up the poem; if I had anything at all in mind, it was a desperate attempt to get a sense of my/self/–of who I/was/, at the time. By genealogical poems, I mean poems whose Authority is based upon personal–and sometimes collective–history as it is revealed by the poet to the Reader or Listener. Sometimes this happen in a single poem, but usually it seems to take a group of them. And I don’t think the Listener or reader will trust the poet until this genesis is revealed; in other words, the poet is obliged to let her or his audience know where he or she is coming from. (I know that I personally don’t trust the social and political comments inherent in most poems until I do/know/the poet’s genealogy.)
Leap takes place.
[Develop] There seems to/be/two (probably more) characteristics that are highly/led in these genealogical poems: (1) Intonation. At some point in the poem, or poems, the recitation, the re/calling of the dead – and the accompanying Authority that takes place and (2) Tradition – aspect of the poems that ties it to a specific historical time and place. For instance, in Yeat’s “Blood and the Moon,” he sings:
(“Blessed be this place”) ?
more (Blessed still this lover)
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair
is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burker
have travelled there.
That’s sorta what I mean.
Again, all of this I’ve said above – I had none of it in mind when I made/up/the poem. The poem was created in my belly and my breath. In prison air.
[Free Peoples’ Logo]
[Mostly typed]
FOR THE DANCE BEGINS IN THE BELLY
Who’s filled to the brim on the gantry
For the dance begins in the belly
-FRANCOIS VILLON
I made/up/ “The Idea of Ancestry” in the early sixties when I was in prison, in the belly of a beast. The initial creative/impulse for the poem occurred, and many of the lines were made up, during one of my stints in Solitary Confinement. Being in prison is in itself a trip; and being in “The Hole”, the prison within the prison, is like having one foot in an emotional grave and the other/foot on a banana peeling. After being in solitary for awhile, not knowing night from day, I began to lose track of the days and weeks; I became disoriented, out of touch with my/self. So I started to Re/Member: my grade school classmates and guys I’d been in the army with, and my family, most of all.
(I think Memory and Imagination are the Parents of Creativity. And, in my situation, with such a bleak future facing me, Imagination, if not dead altogether, was definitely crippled.) Memory was all I had to draw on. So I started making/up/the lines and phrases out-loud, memorizing them. And I started to Creative again. I later finished the poem back in my cell.
It seems to me that “The Idea of Ancestry” belongs to a body of poems that I have/come/to call Genealogical. I didn’t have the term in mind when I made/up/the poem; if I had anything at all in mind, it was a desperate attempt, an urge, to grasp a sense of my/self, of who I/was/–right then. By Genealogical poems I mean poems whose Authority is based upon personal–and sometimes collective–history as it is revealed by the poet by the Reader or Listener. Sometimes this revelation might happen in a single poem but it usually seems to take a group of them. And I don’t think the Listener or reader will very much trust the poet until this genesis is revealed; in other words, the poet is obliged to let her or his audience know where he or she is coming from. I know that I personally don’t trust the social and political comments inherent in most poems until I do/know/the poet’s genealogy.
There seems to/be/ two (probably more) characteristics that are highlighted in these genealogical poems. The first is Intonation. At some point in the poem, or poems, the recitation, the Re/Calling of the Dead–and that accompanying Authority that takes place. And I think something else occurs: a Leap is made, a Dance begins, the Art happens, a Communication exists between the poet, the poem, and the people. It’s probably got something to do with the mechanics and poetics involved in the sounds and rhythms of intoning, in the/way/ the Words, themselves, are used.
I call the second characteristic Tradition–that aspect of the poem that ties it to a specific time and place, thus further establishing a historical Authority. For instance, in Yeats’ poem, “Blood and the Moon,” he sings:
Blessed be this place and more blessed still this
tower.
………………………………………………………………
I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare
This winding, gyring, spiring treadmills of a stair
is my ancestral stair;
That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke
have travelled there.
That’s sorta what I mean.
Again, all of this I’ve said above–I had/none/ of it in mind when I made/up/the poem. It was made/up/ in my belly and my breath. In prison air.
– Etheridge Knight
In “Apology for Apostasy,” Knight, the Artist, inserts himself in his Art in a moment of communal inspiration. He transforms his frustration at a critique of his mentor, Gwendolyn Brooks–whom a white critic did not believe could write with enough universality to make the audience forget she was a Black woman—and allows that frustration to inspire the emotional heart of the work.
Further, Knight’s familiarity and friendship with Brooks compelled him to make up an imaginative poem, both honoring his mentor and deconstructing the idea of universality, a notion Knight pursued throughout his career. The poem’s impact, in turn, was profound: he
received a Shelley Award for the piece in 1985.
—Transcription—
Apology for Apostasy
Soft songs, like birds, die in poison air
So my song cannot now be candy.
Anger rots the oak and elm; roses are rare,
Seldom seen through blind despair.
And my murmur cannot be heard
Above the din and damn. The night is full
Of buggers and bastards; no moon or stars
Light the sky. And my candy is deferred
Till peacetime, when my voice shall be light,
Like down, lilting in the air; then shall I
Sing of beaches, white in the magic sun,
And of moons and maidens at midnight.
Amy Spanel, who was acquainted with both Knight and Gwendolyn Brooks, wrote this poem for the poetic giants in 1986. Spanel describes flower-picking resistance as an act of friendship, and like “Apology for Apostasy,” “Do Not Partake of the Abundance” describes community through the interplay of influence.
Knight, whose mentor was Brooks, inspires Spanel to make up the poem, and their mutual connection to Brooks drives the emotional center of the poem. All three have their own concerns; for Brooks, age and moving on in her career; for Knight, age and addiction; for Spanel, fertility and her restrictive upbringing. Spanel revels in the momentary alleviation of fear and suffering through floral gestures of love and friendship: she remembers the many bouquets in Brooks’ office at the Library of Congress, and picks a bunch of fuzzy pink flowers to give to Knight. Here is a community based not only around poeting, but also flower arrangements.
—Transcription—
Do Not Partake of the Abundance – Amy Spanel
On the bouquet – kept to myself-
didn’t read this aloud
DO NOT PARTAKE OF THE ABUNDANCE
my mother said through her rituals
of DON’T PICK THE FLOWERS.
Even now, I feel the pull in me
when picking the lusty blossoms from a laden bush.
Half in shade, half in sun, it welcomes me
to partake – fuzzy pink bells with cerebral aroma
for anyone – fragrant garnishings for a bouquet
I started from run-of-the-mill daisies –
by the subway. Now, a few stops away
from the YA GOTTA GRAB IT WHILE YA CAN
‘CAUSE THERE WON’T BE ENOUGH – I see
there is plenty. And this bouquet
happens to be for Etheridge —
[pg2] but of course I’d like to keep it for me–
yellow, white and pink variations of purity —
bridal suggestive or a muses’s breath —
I will hand it to Etheridge in the freshness
of a man getting flowers from a woman —
hopefully, this will not blow him away
on this breezy afternoon – people so used to
the vice-versa — airily, Gwendolyn
Brooks said, ‘Oh, people send me flowers all the time!’
Standing in her office on her almost-last-day —
with The Library of Congress, I spied
several arrangements of carnations and baby’s breath.
The innocence, the purity, the persistence of the muse’s existence
[pg3] passing through my hands from those plucked
blossoms, that bouquet to Etheridge, into this
pen – and the laurel’s wreath of peace
and wisdom is protecting the three of us
with a halo made of flower-wreaths–
Gwendolyn is probably pushing 70;
in his mid-50s, Eth survived heroin;
and I am scared to death of fertility —
whose potential in me feels like cancer —
All of these inescapables about ourselves —
with death’s drawn-out-way of doing us in —
still do not take away the realness
of these shasta daisies and bush-blossoms
[pg4] tucked within a white sheet of paper
rustling in their stable way with the wind.
This inner and dexterous blossoming of activity
is at least one thing girlish left in me.
May the muse continue to breathe its refuge
for me with bush-blossoms, bouquets,
and poets who have been oraclely where I am going
2:55 TUESDAY
May 13, 1986
3:35
Jerome Robinson, a visual artist, poet, and president of the Wheels of Soul motorcycle group until his death in 2003, eulogizes legendary Black jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk in this 1982 broadside (a one-sided work printed on a large piece of paper). Broadsides often include illustrations; this poem incorporates an image of Monk at his piano behind the text.
Robinson was based in West Philly, where Knight lived at the time and frequently hosted sessions of the Free Peoples’ Poetry Workshop. Like Knight, Robinson places himself within the broadside in the piece’s dedication: “To Brother Knight who put poetry in my reach.” Robinson was in community with Knight through their friendship and proximity living in West Philly, but was also in community with Knight through art. Robinson draws in Knight’s concept of the universality of feelings in this poem: he utilizes his grief, his awe, his community interactions like friendship, and his witness in creating and publishing this broadside.
—Transcription—
Thelonius Sphere Monk
1917-1982
We were all laid back
in our freshly pressed
very cheap suits
lucky strike in one hand
rum and coke in the other
sunglasses resting on a nose
that had grown accustomed
to blue lit smoke filled air
we were at the 5 spot
as monk, miles and trane
took us on a journey of
what was to be
this off key playing brother
that none of us would understand
til years later
played to and for himself
but gave it to everyone
hitting every 3rd or 5th note
playing between notes
inventing notes
taking us where bebop was going
this bearded keyboard player with
the weird name paid us
no attention: paid us no mind
always sitting lower than the keys
to us his hands
were in an awkward position
but it was right for him
that’s why
he never knew we were
there it was right for him
this cat with the weird name
THELONIUS SPHERE MONK
Jerome Robinson
February 1982
Copyright © 1982 Jerome Robinson
To Brother Knight
who put poetry in my reach.
A HYBRIS BROADSIDE
Knight received this American Greetings Original Formula card for his 59th birthday. It was signed to “Mr. K” and “Etheridge,” wishing him “luck,” “love,” and “life,” as Knight was gravely ill at the time of the celebration. One well-wisher thanks Knight for his foundation of the Free People’s Poetry Workshop.
Other greetings are signed informally, from Deta [Galloway], Yusef [Komunyakaa], and Poemboy. Knight knew many of the well-wishers professionally through poetry, but they were also friends and acquaintances. Several were also veterans like Knight and they made up poems that, for example, capture their experiences as soldiers and their trauma from and during their service. This card demonstrates Knight as a community poet: he connected with people through the Word, and those people showed him care and love outside of the Word.
—Transcription—
59th Birthday Card –
(mostly top to bottom, left to right)
Cover:
“Well, here it is, a card from me!”
Inside left panel:
Hey Mr. K!
Thanx for bring Free Peoples into [?] good luck Marshall
Khadijah
One moment in time, always!
Happy 59th
[?]
[?]
Happy Birthday!
Aimeé [?]
Happy Birthday
Mr. Knight
April
Your Paper Writer
Thomas [?]
Naila & Deta say’s love ya!
Dan Carpenter
Donita,
Long distance with admiration
[?]
To brother Etheridge,
Love Greta
Michael Collins
Happy Birthday Etheridge-
Many more!
Love + Respect always
— Jenny O [?]
Inside right panel:
Card inscription: “Now your birthday is complete!”
Thank you for embracing me[,] allowing me to listen while your soul sings.
Poemboy
Wonderful birthday to you!
[?]
Steve and family
Francy
Happy Birthday Etheridge.
Cristy
Etheridge,
Happy Birthday
Lots of love
Dianna Issen
Luck to you Etheridge
Love Chris R.
Happy Birthday
Yusef
Try and live to be hundred!
[?]
Ghana (?)
Live
Alexander Mouton (?)
Happy Birthday Mr K.
[? Gree?]
Love
Kenneth
This clipping comes from weekly Black newspaper New Pittsburgh Courier, December 20, 1986. The New Pittsburgh Courier, founded in 1966, is named after the original Pittsburgh Courier (1907-1965), one of the largest Black newspapers in the United States.
In this interview, Knight says that meeting Gwendolyn Brooks as a mentor and friend helped him find concision, and he began to receive acceptance letters from editors soon after. He was accepted into a society (or community) of poetry that began to offset his rejection by society because of his disappearance into the penitentiary for his crimes and addiction, and his rejection outside of prison “‘because of the existence of institutionalized racism’” he experienced as a Black man.
For Knight, poetry was, through the sharing and speaking of experiences and feelings, a “psychological freeing or liberation” from his loneliness, his (former) carceral status, and his experience of antiblack racism. He became free, then, to reclaim and find other communities, from his start with the toast telling oral tradition to the arts and poetry communities of cities like Pittsburgh or Indianapolis.
—Transcription—
NEW PITTSBURG HIGH COURIER, DECEMBER 20, 1986 PAGE C-1
Pittsburgh Courier
Entertainer
Poet Etheridge Knight Discusses Life of Writing
By WALTER RAY WATSON JR.
Courier Entertainment Writer
Image description: Black and white photo of Knight, wearing a flat top cap, glasses, and dark blazer speaks at a reading.
Image caption: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS LIBERATOR–Poet Etheridge Knight recently read at the University of Pittsburgh at first annual commemoration of “International Human Rights Day.” Knight’s first published book in five years, “The Essential Etheridge Knight,” will be out later this month from the University of Pittsburgh Press. (SAIHOU NJIE Photo)
Fifty-five-year-old poet Etheridge Knight credits poetry with playing a major part in saving his life. The Corinth, Miss., native acknowledged in a recent interview that his life had little direction before he discovered creative expression through writing.
Knight was here last week as a guest poet at the University of Pittsburgh in the first observance by the English department and other groups of “International Human Rights Day.” Knight also was present for the announcement of a newly published collection of his best and latest work by the University of Pittsburgh Press entitled “The Essential Etheridge Knight.”
During the Korean conflict of the mid-1950’s, Knight served as an Army-trained medical technician. “I wasn’t used to seein all that blood and dying,” he noted, recalling that he was in Korea at age 17. “I got hooked on morphine, I got hooked on drugs.”
Knight left the Army and found he couldn’t shake his drug habit. As a result, Knight was often found stealing to pay for his addiction and subsequently was arrested for his continued use and related offenses. By early 1960, Knight was convicted of armed robbery in Indiana, and sentenced to 10-20 years in the Indiana State Penitentiary. During his stay, which lasted six years and eight months with parole in Nov., 1968, Knight came to poetry through an appreciation for oral “toasts” and tales, such as the “Signifying Monkey” and “Shine on the Titanic.”
“I come out of that tradition of black folk poetry. My mentor was a wino. It was later on that I defined myself as a poet,” he said. “Once I defined myself as a poet, it required a discipline. I was already into reading other poets, but I started to get into the theory behind poems as I began studying the other poets.”
He noted that such poets as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman were among the first he read. Yet he felt that by reading black poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Langston Hughes, as well as the so-called “beat-generation” poets such as Allen Ginsberg taught him something more immediate about poetry than what had “reached” him intellectually.
Around 1962, Knight began submitting his poetry to literary magazines. For the first few years, Knight received letters of rejection from editors who, when they were generous, told Knight point blank that he was “too abstract” or “too prosy.”
“Man, you gotta imagine: I’m already in the penitentiary, where I’m already rejected by society. I come home from work, and find I got more reject letters in the mail.”
Knight said that as disheartening as the experience was to not be accepted by the editors of various publications, he found a friend in poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who also offered that he used too many words. “She was helpful, because she turned me on to haiku. Years later, I asked her why she taught haiku and she said, ‘You were too wordy.’”
“I understood that there was a power in words, a power in language,” he said, noting that his early misconception of writing, in general, and poetry, specifically, was that the bigger the word, the more powerful a piece of writing would become.
Once Knight was able to recognize that his writing delivered concepts rather than pictures, he was able to draft better poems that eventually found acceptance among editors.
By the mid-1960’s, Knight was the recipient of his first letter of acceptance from then-Negro Digest editor Hoyt Fuller. The poem was a reflection of the late singer Dinah Washington, whom Knight has learned was dead.
“Dinah Washington was called ‘Queen of the Blues,’” Knight said, “and I could understand why: I mean, she was married seven times, man. She knew what the blues were all about,” he laughed. “I went through the penitentiary showing the letter to everybody,” Knight said.
Knight has been quoted as saying, “Prison is my major metaphor.” When asked to explain, Knight said that the aloneness of any poet or artist is something which is topical and part of the creative condition. “Beyond the metaphor,” he added, “is the reality of my life in America, the reality of being a black male in this country is a prison of a sort because of the existence of institutionalized racism.”
He offered that life for black American males is excessively stressful due to racism. “People say, ‘it’s the diet that’s wrong, they eat too much salt…it’s this or that or it’s inherited.’ That’s b.s. In the South, poor whites eat the same diet, as Blacks do. Brothers in Africa don’t have high blood pressure. Nobody talks about the political or sociological factors–all of this stress in being a black man in this country….” He noted that his father and a brother have died of high blood pressure-related illnesses and that another brother is currently hospitalized for a condition of diabetes.
Knight admits that poetry has had therapeutic effects upon him, though he finds his work to largely consist of a psychological freeing or liberation. “It is not only a way of breaking out of one’s aloneness, or prison. But also a liberating force while being a black male in this country. All art is freedom-seeking: poetry is no different,” he said.
Knight, who recently celebrated his 18th year out of Indiana State Penitentiary, offered that “If it were not for poetry, I would probably be back in prison or a junkie or dead.” He believes that his consciousness as an artist, his continuous self-examination rewarding.
He said that poetry since the ‘beat generation’ has become more “alive.” “When you are hearing poetry read aloud, you are involved with a different process than when it’s on the page. When it’s on the page and you see it there, you can choose to ignore it. When it’s read to you, it can’t be ignored. It touches you.”
This flyer promotes a 1989 benefit poetry reading at The Comedy Works in Bristol, Pennsylvania, to help Knight cover medical expenses after he was struck by a hit-and-run driver. The names on this flyer are of poets Knight met, was influenced by, or influenced, and this event flyer demonstrates that they were in community with Knight. They worked together as poetry contemporaries, but their connection was not limited to work: they saw a community member in need, and hosted the reading as a mutual aid fundraiser around their common interest in poetry.
Lamont B. Steptoe and Bob Small, two of the organizers, are both Pennsylvania-based poets. Steptoe is also a photographer, author, editor, Vietnam veteran, and founder of Whirlwind Press, and Small is founder of Poets and Prophets. The Painted Bride Arts Center, another organizing entity, is an art gallery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was established in 1969.
—Transcription—
FUNDRAISER FOR ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
Image description: Black and white photo of Knight smiling brightly, wearing glasses, a light button-up, and dark jacket
Image caption: Etheridge Knight
ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 15TH 1989, FROM 1-5PM, POETS AND PROPHETS IN COOPERATION WITH THE SPOKEN ARTS SERIES OF THE PAINTED BRIDE ARTS CENTER, WILL BE PRESENTING A BENEFIT POETRY READING FOR POET, ETHERIDGE KNIGHT
INTERNATIONALLY KNOWN POET, ETHERIDGE KNIGHT JUST RECENTLY RESETTLED IN PHILADELPHIA. ON SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10TH, 1988, HE WAS THE VICTIM OF A SERIOUS AUTO ACCIDENT. INJURED BY A HIT AND RUN DRIVER, KNIGHT DOES NOT HAVE MEDICAL COVERAGE, THEREFORE HIS ABILITY TO EARN INCOME HAS BEEN SERIOUSLY IMPAIRED. POETS, BOB SMALL AND LAMONT B. STEPTOE, COORDINATORS OF TWO RESPECTIVE READING SERIES HAVE COMBINED EFFORTS TO PRODUCE THIS SPECIAL BENEFIT READING.
Poets & Prophets
FEATURED & OPEN READING
DATE: January 15, 1989
LOCATION: MIDDLE EAST RESTAURANT, 2ND & CHESTNUT STS.
UPSTAIRS AT THE COMEDY WORKS
TIME: 1–5PM
ADMISSION: $5
Etheridge Knight was born in Corinth, Mississippi. He is a pithy observer of human complexity and a master orator and writer. The Pittsburgh Press recently described Knight as “one of the most vital and political contemporary American poets.” He is the veteran of two formative male institutions: the U.S. Army, returning badly wounded and on his way to drug addiction from the Korean War, and the Indiana State Prison, serving time for a narcotics related armed robbery. It was in prison that Etheridge Knight began his distinguished writing and reading career; a career that has made him a Pulitzer Prize nominee, a recipient of numerous fellowships including a Guggenheim and the winner of the 1987 American Book Award for The Essential Etheridge Knight.
The following poets have come together to donate their services this event. Note: Etheridge Knight is schedule to be the last poet to read in this event.
The Spoken Arts Series
The Painted Bride
Gill Ott
Maralyn Lois Polak
Ron Price
Jerome Robinson
Bill Sherman
Brian Simmons
Bob Small
Lamont B. Steptoe
Jim Styx
Mbali Umoja
Kimmika L. H. Williams
Tommi Avicoli
Herschel Baron
Beth Baker Bowers
Ketan Ben Caesar
Jane Todd Cooper
Jim Cory
Almitra David
Sharon Leonard Goodman
James Hoch
Eugene Howard
Dan Koiner
Nzadi Keita
Lou McKee
Scott Norman