Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry - by L. Ramey

This book restores the slaves' songs to their rightful place in American literature for their intrinsic value as lyric poetry, and as a touchstone of the American imagination.
In this insightful and provocative volume, Ramey reveals spirituals and slave songs to be a crucial element in American literature. This book shows slave songs' intrinsic value as lyric poetry, sheds light on their roots and originality, and draws new conclusions on an art form long considered a touchstone of cultural imagination.

Review
"A valuable study of the formal and thematic characteristics of slave songs, most of which were collected and published in the latter half of the century. Ramey explains how they have been marginalized in the disciplinary study of folklore, religion, and music while also making a strong case for reading them as poetry, as literary texts worthy of inclusion in the canon. In a series of thematically and topically arranged chapters, she demonstrates their influence on Paul Laurence Dunbar and on a wide array of later poets."--American Literary Scholarship

"The main contention of this study is that slave songs are part of the tradition of lyric poetry and as such continue to exert influence on American literature. Arguing for the inclusion of slave songs in the American and African American literary canon, Ramey differentiates slave songs from spirituals, a term that mischaracterizes these works as being only concerned with salvation and redemption. Placing slavery at the center of the canon, this volume does not simply read slave songs as lyrical poems but, perhaps more important, as American poems."--American Literature

"The corpus of slave songs is enormous, and their impact on African American literature has long been acknowledged. But little has been written about the connection between these songs and American literature. Slave songs are usually marginalized in, or omitted altogether from, literary anthologies and studies of verse. Even classic, if now dated, works examining the songs--including Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness (CH, Jul'77) and Dena Epstein's Sinful Tunes and Spirituals (CH, Sep'78)--fail to discuss the poetic aspects of the songs. Ramey (CSU, Los Angeles) attempts to fill this glaring void with this erudite yet readable volume. The author provides provocative analyses of some of the individual songs (e.g., "Poor Pilgrim" and "Steal Away"). More importantly, she sheds light on their originality and their African roots, including the call-and-response tradition. In so doing, she makes a strong argument for studying these important pieces in light of their lyric poetic qualities. This is a book for all who are interested in African American literature and in poetry more broadly."--Choice


“Slave Songs and the Birth of African American Poetry is an invaluable resource for the American literature classroom. It will make it much easier to teach American poetry and African American poetry in a broader cultural context, and will open up all kinds of interesting new lines of discussion.”--Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Professor of English and Director of American Studies, Stanford University

"Ramey argues that spirituals and slave songs are central to the literary legacy of the U.S., both in their own right as a form that goes to the heart of the American experience and as a major reference of the American imagination, through their influence on black and white writers alike. This book restores the spiritual to its rightful place in the American literary canon and will certainly stimulate scholarly interest in the spiritual as art form."--F. Abiola Irele, Harvard University
From the Back Cover
In spite of the unique beauty and universal appeal of African American spirituals, they are rarely considered to be lyric poetry. In the first major study, this book attests that the spirituals deserve a central place in the African American and American poetry canon as one of a foundational and distinctive body of lyric expression. Ramey restores the slave songs to their rightful place in literary tradition for their intrinsic value as poetry, and as a touchstone of the American imagination.