Book contents
- The Cambridge History of African American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of African American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings
- Part II Black Modernity
- Part III The New Black Poetries
- Part IV Building Our Own
- 22 Anthologizing Black Poetry, 1922–2022
- 23 The Sisterhood and Its Legacies
- 24 “An Avant-Garde Thing”
- 25 What Cave Canem Means
- 26 Furious Flowering
- Part V Histories of The Future
- Index
- References
25 - What Cave Canem Means
Towards an Aesthetic History
from Part IV - Building Our Own
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 May 2026
Edited by
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of African American Poetry
- The Cambridge History of African American Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Beginnings
- Part II Black Modernity
- Part III The New Black Poetries
- Part IV Building Our Own
- 22 Anthologizing Black Poetry, 1922–2022
- 23 The Sisterhood and Its Legacies
- 24 “An Avant-Garde Thing”
- 25 What Cave Canem Means
- 26 Furious Flowering
- Part V Histories of The Future
- Index
- References
Summary
How do poets participating in a Black poetry community navigate between collective purpose and creative individuality, with respect to both political and artistic goals? This chapter engages this and related questions, offering an account of Cave Canem as a resource and force within contemporary Black poetry – but not in an institutional history. My focus here is not the foundation that has been an engine of empowerment and an influential player in the world of twenty-first-century American literature, but rather the ongoing, dynamic gathering of writers that describes itself as “a home for Black poetry.” What can we learn by constructing an aesthetic history of this organization? This effort will lay the groundwork for future scholarship that can more thoroughly explore what Cave Canem demonstrates about the power of collective action and mutual support to change culture, as well as the gravitational pull of the culturally familiar.
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- The Cambridge History of African American Poetry , pp. 459 - 477Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
References
Selected Bibliography
Baker, Houston A. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985.Google Scholar
“Black Art,” in S O S: Poems, 1961–2013, ed. Paul Vangelista. New York, NY: Grove Press, 2015, pp. 149–150.Google Scholar
Brooks, Gwendolyn. “the children of the poor,” in Blacks. Chicago, IL: The David Company, 1987, pp. 115–119.Google Scholar
Christian, Barbara. “The Race for Theory,” Feminist Studies 14(1) (Spring 1988): 67–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coates, Ta-nehisi. “Heirs of the Dog: D.C. Poets Travel to New York’s Cave Canem Retreat and Discover What They’ve Got Back Home.” Washington City Paper, July 11, 1997Google Scholar
Eady, Cornelius. “Cave Canem: Community for African American Poets,” American Poet (Spring 2000): 7.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifyin(g) Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Joyce, Joyce Ann. “The Black Canon: Reconstructing Black American Literary Criticism,” New Literary History 18(2) (Winter 1987): 335–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nguyen, Sophia. “How the Dark Room Collective Sparked ‘Total Life’ in Literature,” Harvard Magazine (March–April 2016).Google Scholar
Rowell, Charles Henry. “Writing Self, Writing Community: An Introduction,” in Rowell, Charles Henry (ed.), Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013), pp. xxix–liii.Google Scholar
Shockley, Evie. Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Shockley, Evie. “Shifting the (Im)balance: On Race and the Poetry Canon,” Boston Review, June 6, 2013. Available at www.bostonreview.net/articles/shifting-imbalance (accessed January 11, 2026).Google Scholar
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