Henry Dumas

Henry Dumas

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A cult has grown up around Henry Dumas--a very deserved cult... He was brilliant. He was magnetic, and he was an incredible artist"--Toni Morrison

Henry Dumas
July 20, 1934 - May 23, 1968

Photo courtesy of Joseph D. McNair
http://www2.mdcc.edu/north/asili/volii_3/nu00033.htm

Author of poetry and fiction who wrote about the clash between black and white cultures.

Dumas grew up in Arkansas and in New York City's Harlem. While in the U.S. Air Force (1953-57) he won creative-writing awards for his contributions to Air Force periodicals. He attended City College in New York and Rutgers University (1958-61) and studied with jazz artist-philosopher Sun Ra; he then taught at Hiram College (1967) and Southern Illinois University (1967-68). Religion (especially Christianity), African-American folklore and music, and the civil-rights movement, in which he was active, were important influences on his writing.

The vulnerability of black children amid the Southern white lynch-mob mentality, a young sharecropper encountering a civil-rights worker, and whites experiencing the mystical force of black music are among the subjects Dumas examined in his short stories, many of which were collected in Ark of Bones (1970) and Rope of Wind (1979). Nature, revolutionary politics, and music are especially frequent subjects of his poetry, which is noted for its faithfulness to the language and cadence of African-American speech. Poetry for My People (1970; republished as Play Ebony, Play Ivory, 1974) is a collection of blues-influenced verse. Dumas, who was murdered [by a New York City Transit Officer], left an unfinished novel, Jonoah and the Green Stone, which was published in 1976.
-- Britannica On-line http://www-lj.eb.com:182/blackhistory/micro/727/8.html

Goodbye, Sweetwater: New and Selected Stories
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Author: Henry Dumas, Eugene Redmond
Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
Date Published: October 1988
Format: Trade Paper

These excellent short stories will introduce the late Dumas, who was killed in 1968 at the age of 33 by a New York City transit police officer, to a wider audience as a profoundly gifted and intelligent author. His settings range from the small towns of the rural South to the explosive streets of Harlem in the late 1960s. The civil rights activist imbues his stories with myth and folklore, rightful anger and delineation's of the inequities that exist for blacks in America. The author's invocation of the ethos of his people lends an honesty to the writings on racial tensions, yet never lapses into narrow-mindedness, and his trenchant rendering of pain, love, religious and family life is universally appealing. His rhythmic, eloquent style is both arresting and unique in its capacity to drive home the prophetic messages that inform his prose. From the young Southern boy named Fish-hound in the eerie ``Ark of Bones''who is told by an old Noah-like man, ``Son, you are in the house of generations. Every African who lives in America has a part of his soul in this ark''to the teenage narrator of ``Strike and Fade''a powerfully sketched glimpse of inner-city turmoil, who proclaims, ``I'm hurtin too much. I'm lettin my heat go down into my soul. When it comes up again, I won't be limpin''Dumas never fails to capture the spirit and collective consciousness of his beloved people. Portions of this book were previously published in Ark of Bones, Rope of Wind and Jonoah and the Green Stone. (May)
- Publishers Weekly

Outer Space Blues

People, I heard the news the other day
like to scare me half to death
Yeah things happen in this world
like to scare me half to death
TV say a spaceship is comin here
if it do wont be no people left

But I tell you folks, spaceship cant be so bad
Reckon I just fool people,
spaceship cant be too bad
I been on earth all my life,
and all my life I been mad

So when the spaceship land
I aint runnin too fast
I say, I reckon I might not run too fast
I might run over into Mississippi
and you know I cant pass

Hold it people, I see a flying saucer comin
guess I wait and see
Yeah, a spaceship comin
guess I wait and see
All I know they might look just like me

BROWN SOUNDS

brown sound chocolate
memories
like the first time
you saw grapes
and tasted them
and learned the color
blue

brown sound cream milk
echoes
like the first time
you saw bees
and tasted gold
and learned the honey
tongue

brown sound africa
pulses
like the first time
you exploded between legs
and heard drums
and learned the message
of rhythm love
brown sound america
pulses plus pushing
down trees
like the first time
you saw that wild crazy horse
riding through painted deserts
and you learned the grand canyon
red mother
brown sound
black outline
like the first time
like the first time
the first time
is the last time
like that

Related Links

The Poetry of Henry Dumas

Poem of the week page

The College of Education,
University of Central Arkansas

Encyclopedia Britannica On-line