An exploration of race and heritage, For My People is the first book by poet and novelist Margaret Walker (1915-1998) and the 41st volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Considered among the most important collections of poetry written by a participant in the Black Chicago Renaissance, For My People is a series of ballad poems with memorable characters, including the New Orleans sorceress Molly Means; Kissie Lee, a tough young woman who dies "with her boots on switching blades"; Poppa Chicken, an urban drug ...
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An exploration of race and heritage, For My People is the first book by poet and novelist Margaret Walker (1915-1998) and the 41st volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Considered among the most important collections of poetry written by a participant in the Black Chicago Renaissance, For My People is a series of ballad poems with memorable characters, including the New Orleans sorceress Molly Means; Kissie Lee, a tough young woman who dies "with her boots on switching blades"; Poppa Chicken, an urban drug dealer and pimp; John Henry, killed by a ten-pound hammer; and Stagolee, who kills a white officer but eludes a lynch mob. The memorable title poem evokes the power of resilience not only for black people, but for all people.
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The Yale Series of Younger Poets celebrated its centenary in 2019 and is the longest-running annual literary award in the United States. The prize is open to Americans who have not previously published a book of poetry. The Series publishes a book-length manuscript for the recipient of the prize.
In 1941, Margaret Walker became the first African American to receive the award for her collection of poems titled "For My People". Walker (1915 -- 1998) was born in Montgomery, Alabama and later became part of a circle of writers in Chicago. She was a graduate student in Iowa at the time she wrote the poems and received the award. The competition judge for the year was the American poet Stephen Vincent Benet who wrote an eloquent Introduction to Walker's poems. Benet wrote that "straightforwardness, directness, reality are good things to find in a young poet. It is rarer to find them combined with a controlled intensity of emotion and a language that, at times, even when it is most modern, has something of the image of biblical poetry. And it is obvious that Miss Walker uses that language because it comes naturally to her and is part of her inheritance."
Benet wrote that "I do not know what work Miss Walker will do in the future, though I should be very much surprised if this book were all she had to give." Walker did not disappoint. During the course of a long career, she wrote the novel "Jubilee", essays, and several additional volumes of poetry.
"For my People" is a book of 54 pages in three distinct parts. The first part includes the title poem which is broadly to "my people everywhere singing their slave songs repeatedly; their dirges and their ditties and their blues and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an unseen power." The poems in this part of the book are broad-themed and directed to the conditions of African American people, particularly in the South. Benet wonderfully described these poems as "full of the rain and the sun that fall upon the shoulders of her people, full of the bitter questioning and the answers not yet found, the pride and the disillusion and the reality."
Part Two of the book consists of ten short poems written in dialect. Walker writes of legendary figures including John Henry and "Bad Man Stagolee". She writes of criminals,laborers, lovers who fall out, and characters such as Mollie Means: "Old Molly Means was a hag and a witch." There is a strong sense of particularity to these poems. As Benet wrote, Walker showed she was "interested in people wherever they are." He described these poems as "set for voice and the blues, they could be sung as easily as spoken. And, first and last, they are part of our earth,"
Part Three of the book consists of six sonnets written in formal English. Here is an example, a sonnet titled "Whores".
"When I grew up I went away to work
where painted whores were fascinating sights.
They came on like whole armies through the nights --
their sullen eyes on mine, their mouths a smirk,
And from their hands keys hung suggestively.
Old women working by an age-old plan
to make their bread in ways as best they can
would hobble past and beckon tirelessly.
Perhaps one day they'll all die in the streets
or be surprised by bombs in each wide bed;
learning too late in unaccustomed dread
that easy ways, like whores on special beats,
no longer have the gift to harbor pride
or bring men peace, or leave them satisfied."
Benet found a "deep sincerity in all these poems -- a sincerity at times disquieting", He concluded: "You cannot deny its honesty, you cannot deny its candor. And this is not far away or long ago -- this is part of our nation, speaking."
The original 1942 edition of "For my People" is a rarity. In 2019, to celebrate the centenary of Walker's birth, Yale University Press brought out this facsimile paperback edition of the original work. (Coincidentally 2019 was the centenary of the Yale Younger Poets award which was celebrated in a separate volume.) It is in the same format as the 1942 book and includes Benet's Introduction together will Walker's poems.
In 1989, Walker published the poems in "For my People" as well as her uncollected poems and poems in subsequent books in a collection titled "This is my Century; New and Collected Poems". Thus, although the original edition of "For my People" is difficult to find, the poems and more are available in a collected works.
With that said, I found this book precious and a joy. There is a special experience in getting to know a poet through a little volume that was destined to be remembered and to begin a career, Margaret Walker still does not have the readership her work deserves. I was grateful for the opportunity to get to know her and to read the praise from Stephen Vincent Benet and to hold this little reminder of 1942 in my hands.
