A Black Arts Poetry Machine: Amiri Baraka and the Umbra Poets

David Grundy
Bloomsbury Publishing, Feb. 7, 2019 - Literary Criticism - 280 pages

A vital hub of poetry readings, performance, publications and radical politics in 1960s New York, the Umbra Workshop was a cornerstone of the African American avant-garde.

Bringing together new archival research and detailed close readings of poetry, A Black Arts Poetry Machine is a groundbreaking study of this important but neglected group of poets. David Grundy explores the work of such poets as Amiri Baraka, Lorenzo Thomas and Calvin Hernton and how their innovative poetic forms engaged with radical political responses to state violence and urban insurrection. Through this examination, the book highlights the continuing relevance of the work of the Umbra Workshop today and is essential reading for anyone interested in 20th-century American poetry.

Contents

Amiri Baraka the Umbra Workshop and the Writing of Literary History	1
Umbra Internationalism and the Death of Lumumba	35
Amiri Barakas Magic Words	69
David Henderson Writes the City	99