"Far better to create one living lineThan learn a hundred sunk in fame's recline."
- James Emanuel, "Sonnet For A Writer"
It's a pattern all too familiar- another great writer goes neglected. James Emanuel was born in 1921 in Nebraska but has spent the past several decades living in France. http://www.cosmoetica.com/S1-DES1.htm
The above link is the first real article written on him on the Internet, which can be found on Cosmoetica. Such a Master with words, and yet has gone ignored by critics. You can't find him anywhere in updated anthologies, although he knew Langston Hughes quite well. No, instead of James Emanuel, we get the shitty Maya Angelou and dull Donald Hall.
But I'll leave some poems for you to ponder, and let the work do the speaking.
"For my money THE most neglected published poet of the 20th Century. An expatriate African-American, Emanuel is masterly in free verse & form, personal & political." - Dan Schneider
I love this sonnet... Just marvel at the language and sounds...
Something slow moves through him, watched by hills.
Something low within each rock receives
His noonday wish, then crumbles rich; so fills
Each furrow that the prairie year upheaves.
His arm has lain with boulders. His copper hand
Has mused on roots, uncaring of barbed wire.
His fist has closed on thistle, and dug the land
For corn October snows have whelmed entire.
Something flows within him in stubborn streams,
And in the parted foliage something lives
In upright green, stirred by the rhythmic gleams
Of his hoe and spade. From worn-out arms he gives;
The earth receives, turns all his pain to soil,
Where he believes, and testifies through toil.
Sonnet For A Writer
Far rather would I search my chaff for grain
And cease at last with hunger in my soul,
Than suck the polished wheat another brain
Refurbished till it shone, by art's control.
To stray across my own mind's half-hewn stone
And chisel in the dark, in hopes to cast
A fragment of our common self, my own,
Excels the mimicry of sages past.
Go forth, my soul, in painful, lonely flight,
Even if no higher than the earthbound tree,
And feel suffusion with more glorious light,
Nor envy eagles their proud brilliancy.
Far better to create one living line
Than learn a hundred sunk in fame's recline.
Click for another article on James:
http://www.cosmoetica.com/B337-DES277.htm
3) For The 4th Grade, Prospect School: How I Became A Poet
My kite broke loose,
took all my string
and backed into the sun.
I followed far as I could go
and high as I could run.
My special top went spinning
down the gutter, down the drain.
I heard it gurgling sideways,
saw it grinning in the rain,
my string wrapped around it
while I reached for it in vain.
My dog got thin and went away.
He took his leash- the wrapping string
that we pretended was a rope-
and went as far as he could hope
to find the sickbed where I lay.
And now, when I remember strings
and how they bind together things,
and how they stretch (like reach and run),
and hold (like hope) and give (like sun),
I tie together things I know
and wind up with a poem to show
http://www.cosmoetica.com/S8-DES6.htm
Emanuel's Opus is called Whole Grain. It's his body of poems, worth reading. You can buy it off Amazon. I recommend for any lover of poetry.
Click here to read an interview with this Great Neglected Poet.
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