Black Anima

By: N. J. Loftis

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Hardcover | 17 July 1973 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Format
Hardcover

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 12.7 x 2.54

Hardcover

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Black Anima is an extraordinary long poem by a gifted young writer whose work has been highly praised by, among others, W. H. Auden and John Ashbery. It is an odyssey which takes the reader from the Alamac Hotel on upper Broadway through the underground of contemporary Europe to Queen Nefertiti's Egypt and back in search of black identity.

Industry Reviews

As bad white poetry tends towards preciosity, so bad black verse tends toward bombast, as is evident in this long narrative combo of prophecy ("and I saw the Black Armies/ and the armies of Whites/ engaged in spirited struggle"), chronicles of cliched social injustice ("a man was hung/ with hands tied behind his back/ and they called it suicide"), religious invocation ("Thou are not dead, dear Lord,/ But flown afar" - repeat twice), and egregious name-dropping ("Wystan" and "Imamu" - who, for the benefit of the white audience Loftis theoretically refuses to cater to, he most considerately explains is LeRoi Jones). In form this is a discursive odyssey through hell and environs, replete with the usual villains - Rockefeller & Co., Jewish landlords - all of it written in a turgid secondhand rhetoric borrowed from somebody or other ("You have become what you dreamed") or maybe two or three. (Kirkus Reviews)

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