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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.52
EAN: 9780813918655
ISBN: 0813918650
Label: University Press of Virginia
Manufacturer: University Press of Virginia
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 508
Publication Date: 1999-08-01
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Studio: University Press of Virginia

The poet Melvin B. Tolson (1898-1966) was once recognized as one of black America's most important modernist voices. Playful, fluent, and intellectually sophisticated, his poems stirred up significant praise, and some lively criticism, during his lifetime but have been out of print for decades and essentially left out of the literary canon. With the publication of this first complete collection of his work, Tolson can finally be given his proper place in American poetry.

This volume brings together Tolson's three books of poetry--Rendezvous with America (1944), Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953) and Harlem Gallery (1965)--as well as fugitive poems after 1944. His work has at times been controversial because of his historical, intellectual subject matter, and his commitment to the priorities of art rather than the imperatives of politics. However a fresh reading of his challenging masterpiece, Harlem Gallery, a poem in 24 cantos, reveals an urgent meditation on the plight of the black artist in a white society and a concern with social justice that locates Tolson in the mainstream of African-American writing. Such powerful themes, as well as his range of tone and mesmerizing imagery, have won Tolson a growing number of enthusiastic admirers, who place him alongside such legendary black poets as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Hayden.

While his peers Hughes and Countee Cullen were part of the Harlem Renaissance, Melvin B. Tolson was not identified with any particular movement, and his legacy in American literature has been elusive. This book, enhanced by a moving introduction by Rita Dove and useful notes by editor Raymond Nelson, provides the text for a renewed appreciation of one of the great talents in African-American poetry.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Harlem Gallery and Other Poems
Review: Perhaps one of the most powerful yet ignored American voices of his time was Melvin Tolson, whose work unashamedly demanded a level of literacy and general knowledge only to be found in the classic talented fraction of any population. Born in the late 19th century he was educated and became a college professor against the odds of racial injustice, and rose above those circumstances to inspire generations after him to achieve excellence in spite of difficult odds.

Tolson's "Dark Symphony" particularly excited this writer, who saw him read excerepts from this piece when he visited his Alma Mater(and mine), Lincoln University Penna., six months before he died in 1966. His work is so classic that in time Tolson, I believe, will become "Poet Laureate of the U.S." the country he so loved.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A superb anthology of an outstanding Black poet.
Review: Raymond Nelson edits Harlem Gallery And Other Poems Of Melvin B. Tolson (1865-0), which presents works from one of the most recognized black voices in American poetry. His poems are here organized by topic and include notes for further study.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Melvin B. Tolosian Review
Review: Melvin B. Tolson was recognized as one of the first African American poets whose poetry has been classified as being in the esoteric category. The implication of this statement means that Tolson was writing poetry in a format which would be acceptable by the greatest English and American poets. One of them who recognized Tolson was W.H. Auden, who wrote favorable reviews about Tolson's poetry. Tolson, who came after the last years of the Harlem Renissance era, knew many of the prominent writers and poets of that era, which lasted from the 1920s through the 1930s. He knew many of the well known writers and poets of that period, including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Zora Hurston, V.F. Cavington, Ralph Ellison, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker, W.E.B. Dubios, James Weldon Johnson and Charles S. Johnson. While he was at Wiley College, Marshall, Texas, Tolson established his reputation by publishing his first book of poems entitled, Rendezvous with America, in 1944. For years prior to that date, Tolson taught English classes to thousands of students since his arrival there from Lincoln University, Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1923. Also he was the coach of the famous Wiley College Debate Team, which included, James Farmer, who later became the founder of the CORE Civil Rights Organization.

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