Great poetry allows us to discover the many sides of ourselves and the world around us – both its beauty and its injustice. This audio course “Classics of Black American Protest Poetry” explores the U.S. tradition of Black protest through poetry. In the face of the recent murder of George Floyd, the disporportionate mortality of people of color during the COVID 19 pandemic, and Black Lives Matter demonstrations all over the country and over the world, we look back at America’s great history of civic poetry. In this audio course, we will read several foundational poems rooted in the Harlem Renaissance, including classics by Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Lucille Clifton.
Poetry in America is a series of audio courses that explore poetry as an art form and a cultural force, operating through history to reflect and shape American identity. These podcourses, hosted by Harvard professor Elisa New, will feature highlights and never-before-heard outtakes from conversations with many of the most distinguished people of our time, as well as poetry readers and interpreters of all ages. Some of our distinguished guests include two Vice Presidents and a President, musical giants like Yo Yo Ma, great actors and directors like John Lithgow and Cynthia Nixon, legendary athletes like Shaquille O'Neal, and many distinguished writers and scholars.
To begin this podcourse on great Black protest poems, we start with the great and foundational
wellspring of African American poetry – the tradition of the Spiritual. Spirituals are traditional
songs of African Americans; often, they are imbued with Christian values and describe the
hardship, hope and disappointment of slavery. In this episode, we hear international opera star
Davóne Tines sing "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel," a complex protest poem itself, and a great
musical classic of spiritual striving.
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