Anthologies of African American Writing

Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship

"Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship" . Ed. Michael S. Harper and Robert B. Stepto. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1979. xviii+486 pp. (Originally pub. in "Massachusetts Review" 18.3-4 [1977].)

Foreword / John Hope Franklin -- Preface -- Son's return : oh, didn't he ramble / Sterling A. Brown -- Uplift from a dark tower and other poems / Michael S. Harper -- Historical frequencies of Ralph Waldo Ellison / John F. Callahan -- Paintings / Richard Yarde -- Elegies for Paradise Valley / Robert Hayden -- Covenant of timelessness and time : symbolism and history in Robert Hayden's Angle of ascent / Wilburn Williams, Jr. -- Sculpture / Richard Hunt -- Sense of story / James Alan McPherson -- Music of the streets / Frederick Turner -- Someone sweet angel child / Sherley A. Williams -- Blues roots of contemporary Afro-American poetry / Sherley A. Williams -- Packwood's sermon by firelight / Leon Forrest -- If he changed my name : an interview with Leon Forrest -- Art of Romare Bearden / Ralph Ellison -- Odysseus collages / Romare Bearden -- Schooner Flight / Derek Walcott -- Toward a world Black literature and community / Melvin Dixon -- I thought I knew these people : Richard Wright and the Afro-American literary tradition / Robert B. Stepto -- from Sula / Toni Morrison -- Intimate things in place : a conversation with Toni Morrison -- Siras Bowens of Sunbury, Georgia : a Tidewater artist in the Afro-American visual tradition / Robert Farris Thompson -- Africa, slavery, and the roots of contemporary Black culture / Mary F. Berry & John W. Blassingame -- Shadows in the moonlight / John Stewart -- Photographs / Lawrence Sykes -- Star-apple kingdom / Derek Walcott -- Reflections before and after Carnival : an interview with Derek Walcott -- Militance of a photograph in the passbook of a Bantu under detention / Michael S. Harper -- Image of Africa / Chinua Achebe -- Poems / Robert Hayden -- Four poems / Michael S. Harper -- In my father's house / Ernest J. Gaines -- Almeyda / Gayl Jones -- Gayl Jones : an interview -- Deep song / Gayl Jones -- Looking for Zora / Alice Walker -- Love's dozen / Jay Wright -- Three poems / Michael S. Harper -- Late Coltrane : a re-membering of Orpheus / Kimberly W. Benston -- From experience to eloquence : Richard Wright's Black boy as art / Charles T. Davis -- Duke Ellington vamps 'til ready / Albert Murray -- Backwacking, a plea to the senator / Ralph Ellison -- Study and experience : an interview with Ralph Ellison -- After modernism, after hibernation : Michael Harper, Robert Hayden, and Jay Wright / Robert B. Stepto -- American journal / Robert Hayden.

• Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Negroes Old, Negroes New: On Afro-American Modernism." [Rev. of "Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Afro-American Literature, Art, and Scholarship", ed. Michael S. Harper and Robert B. Stepto. 1979] "ADE Bulletin" 64 (1980): 34-36. [MLAIB]

• The work is "Avowedly an effort to construct 'the Afro-American canon in our time'": "Conspicuously absent are writers like Amiri Baraka, Don L. Lee, Nikki Giovanni, Ed Bullins, and other militants" (Kinnamon 1997: 466).

• Kinnamon 1997: 466.

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