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1 results

  • 25 - What Cave Canem Means

  • from Part IV - Building Our Own
  • Edited by Keith D. Leonard, American University, Washington DC
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of African American Poetry
    Published online:
    20 May 2026
    Print publication:
    11 June 2026, pp 459-477

  • 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.