Classical Allusions in Contemporary African American Poetry — Chiyuma Elliott

The Morningside Institute

African American literature has a rich tradition of both using and discarding the classics. In the 20th century, the Black feminist poet Audre Lorde argued that, “[t]he master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” and Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was inspired by Black Arts Movement poets to de-colonize her artistic practice systematically by eschewing poetic forms and modes of European origin. In this talk, Prof. Chiyuma Elliott (Berkeley) will explore a different pole on that creative continuum: contemporary poets (herself included) for whom classical authors are key touchstones and interlocutors. She will focus on several contemporary poems about peace and violence that allude to Homer’s epics in meaningful ways, including Yusef Komunyakaa’s “Latitudes,” Rowan Ricardo Phillips’s “Even Homer Nods,” and her own Black Lives Matter poem “Dear Ilium”. Her core argument is that exploring the different ways these poems are in sustained conversation with the classics tells us something about how contemporary authors are imagining Black selfhood, American history, and what it means to belong in this nation and on this planet.

Chiyuma Elliott is Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. This lecture was presented at the Morningside Institute on November 10, 2021. The Morningside Institute brings scholars and students together to examine human life beyond the classroom and consider its deepest questions through the life of New York City. For more information about upcoming events, please visit https://www.morningsideinstitute.org.