Summary Of The Black Scholar By Etheridge Knight

Etheridge Knight wrote an article for The Black Scholar, called “On the Oral Nature of Poetry”, in which he correlates poetry to the physical and tangible world and argues that poetry is an oral art, not a written one. He relates poetry and music in their ability to physically affect someone with their powerful rhythm and claims that ignoring structure and rhyme is “...like a carpenter throwing away a hammer out of his kit,” (Knight, 92). Despite the criticism of ignoring basic structure, Knight believes that it is unnecessary to be unnecessarily restricted to form. He jokes that “The English might breathe in iambic pentameters, but we don't take in air like that,” (Knight 93). Poetry is akin to breathing, the construction of poems is affected

by upbringing. Farmers will use metaphors of the ground and seasons while the urban worker may speak of streets and factories. To prove his point Knight reminisces about “toasts,” a poetic precursor to raps, and his time in prison acting as a scribe. Knight learned vocal wordplay from the toasts and, through writing letters to the beloved, he heard the different voices of emotion. These troves of knowledge form the foundation of Knight’s style of oral poetry.

Etheridge Knights ideals of spoken poetry are clearly shown through many of his poems with “The Idea of Ancestry” being a prime example. It is instantly recognizable that Etheridge Knight does not use lines as a marker for rhythm in this poem, preferring the rhythm to naturally arise. The repetition listing of his relatives, sometimes taking an aside to interject information, shows the closeness he feels to his relations. The lines, “I know their style, / they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me,” shows exactly how close Knight is to his extended family, but the next line, “they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee,” uses the same cadence while explaining that Knight actually feels distant his family (The Idea of Ancestry 6-8). This change in tone contrasted with the constant rhythm reveals both his longing to be with his family and the feeling of distinctness he feels due to his time in prison.
In the second stanza Etheridge Knight lists the family members that he has, “at one time or another been in love with,” that is to say, the relatives he has favored. In the third he enumerates the family members with whom he shares a name. These two lists, along with the list of family members in the first stanza, all share the same tempo, sometimes interrupted with facts about particular members. This repetition causes the first section to take on a sort of somber musical tone with the lists acting as a chorus that is punctuated with extra information about the family members.
The second section of “The Ideas of Ancestry” throws this lyrical rhythm away in favor for metaphors about his return to his family. While hitchhiking his way back home, “The brown / hills and red gullies of Mississippi send out their electric / messages, galvanizing [Etheridge Knight’s] genes,” (The Ideas of Ancestry 23-25). Returning home seems to excite Etheridge Knight, but galvanization is also the process of using electricity to plate steel with zinc to protect the steel from rusting. So, while Knight is excited about returning home, he is also protecting himself for the reactions of his family when he arrives back home. He also uses the metaphor of a salmon, “leaping and bucking up his birthstream,” for his return home (The Idea of Ancestry 26). Etheridge Knight has to fight all the way back to his home. When salmon return to their birthing grounds they sire a new generation of salmon and then die. Similarly Knight hopes to shed his old life in prison and return to his family.
Again Etheridge Knight switches styles, he spends the rest of the stanza using short, quick lines. These lines depict disjoint scenes of him enjoying himself, until “the caps ran out /and my habit came down,” ( The Ideas of Ancestry 31-32). Knight uses these fleeting lines to simulate the way he felt while he was either high or experiencing withdrawal. The last line of the stanza returns to more conversational tone than the last blitz of lines, indicating his relief of his addled mental state.
Along with the sudden change in style, Etheridge Knight also changes his choice in words. In the second section, Knight uses slang and idioms: yr, kinfolks, caps, croaker, crib, etc. Before his reading of the poem, Etheridge Knight comments that he started “The Ideas of Ancestry” while in solitary confinement (PennSound, The Idea of Ancestry). The two sections of the poem may signify more than just when the events take place; they may be written at two separate times. The first section represents Knight’s Poetry when he was in prison, and the second represents it years later after he gained experience and confidence.
Along with these more complex styles, Knight still employs basic poetic tools. In first stanza, Etheridge Knight makes uses of alliteration, “They stare / across the space at me sprawling on my bunk,” (The Idea of Ancestry 4-5). The audience’s, “uneasiness is caused by physical means, by the sounds and vibrations themselves,” (Knight 93). By consciously repeatedly using the “sibilant” sound, Knight injects his poem with the sensation of uneasiness that he felt laying there on his bunk in prison.
When the poem is read from the page, it appears that Knight intended for the seventh and eighth lines to rhyme. Instead, while listening to Etheridge Knight read the poem, it is apparent that the flow of the poem does not exemplify that rhyme. Instead, the verbal nature of Knight’s poems causes the phrase, “I am me, they are thee,” to resonate soundly, (PennSound, The Idea of Ancestry). This causes the mind to linger on Knight’s island of loneliness in a poem about his relationships with his relatives.

Another poem where Etheridge Knight shows his mastery of vocal style is “Feeling Fucked Up” where he laments life after his girlfriend leaves him.

The poem lacks any punctuation, except for a lone hyphen concluding the first stanza. This lack of punctuation causes the poem’s rhythm to be highly dependent on the orator reading the poem and demonstrated Knight’s high regard for poetry as an oral art rather than a written one. The poem starts off sounding like a prayer, “Lord she’s gone done left me,” (Feeling Fucked Up 1). Because of the religious tone Knight starts the poem with, the poem takes on the likeness of a verbal confession, an explanation for his rage. In addition, the repetition of the “-one”sounds adds a resounding anguished tone. Etheridge Knight touched on a similar association of the in his “On the Oral Nature of Poetry,” he relates the “oh” sound to sadness, using "Lenore" and "Nevermore” from Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” as examples (On the Oral Nature of Poetry 93). Knight continues to resonate our souls with his vocal poetry, “bare / bright bone white crystal sand glistens / dope death dying and jiveing drove,” (Feeling Fucked Up 3-5). These three lines effectively make up two similarly constructed verses: in both there is a string of alliteration and have two rhyming words separated by a different word. The goal of this repetition to draw attention to the addiction that Knight suffered, and presumably the reason his girlfriend left

him.
“Feeling Fucked Up” has only one piece of punctuation, a hyphen at the end of the first stanza.

This sole punctuation mark signifies Knight’s derailed train of the explanation and becoming lost in the memory of his departed girlfriend. Additionally the pause the hyphen implies also marks a transition to the anger laced second stanza, in which Knight curses out everything from music to political figures to Christianity. Like in “The Idea of Ancestry,” Knight uses a repetitious list to reinforce sonic resonance and pull the audience into the poem. The word “fuck” acts a stabilizing point and driving force of the oral nature of the second stanza. The use of “fuck” may seem excessive, but without it the stanza becomes a disjointed string of words loses its rhythm and its powerful despair. While “fuck” forms the structure of the second stanza, the meat of the section is what Knight is cursing out. That is to say everything he enjoys: Coltrane, smack, red ripe tomatoes, etc. Cursing out this list in particular shows that Knight is willing to give up anything and everything and shows the exact extent of his sorrow. This depression is exemplified with the poem ending with the rhyming lines, “the whole motherfucking thing/ all I want is my woman back / so that my soul can sing,” (Feeling Fucked Up 16-18). When Etheridge Knight speaks these lines, there is an air of finality and longing to the words that the rhyme only helping to emphasize the resounding

longing.

While Etheridge Knight is a prime example of using freer forms of poetry, he has written poetry with more constrained meter. The best example is “For Malcolm a Year After.” Patricia Liggins Hill notes that Etheridge Knight has specifically chosen the ballad as his template for the poem and that the choice actually makes the poem better (Hill). Hill recounts the event that prompted Knight to create the poem; on the anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination, Knight asked several fellow inmates if they remembered the importance of the date. When none could recall, Knight wrote the poem in a fit of anger (Hill). Knight specifically chose the more restrictive ballad form so that anger does not overflow, “Adhere to foot and strict iamb; / Control the burst of angry words,”(For Malcolm, A Year After 2-3). The “strict iamb” that Knight is referring to is the iambic tetrameter that he employs. (While ballads traditionally alternate between tetrameter and trimeter, many variations on the traditional form exist.) For this poem Knight forces himself to breath like an englishman so that he can not make use of his natural rhythm and allow his rage to spill. He constrains himself to the dryer, less emotional, “empty anglo tea lace words”, and “dead white and dry bone bare” form so that he does not sully the memory of Malcolm X with his seething rage and the poem can become a “proper verse.”
While Etheridge Knight may have restricted himself to a more traditional form, he specifically chose the form of the ballad for its historical characteristics. Erik Simpson notes several of these characteristics in his online textbook: oral in nature with simple language and in third person. Simpson goes on to explain that ballads are often chosen as a reaction to more complex and “overly intellectual;” this preference for more natural sounding verse reflects Etheridge Knight’s idea of breath in poetry. Knight deviates greatly from more traditional ballads because, while ballads are meant to tell a story, “For Malcolm, A Year After” takes the appearance of a set of instructions to Knight himself. The instruction guide Etheridge Knight in overcoming the anger he feels at the forgotten assassination. Despite“For Malcolm, A Year After” digress from the standard form, ballads are meant to tell tales about legendary heros and the poem effectively becomes a memorial towards Malcolm X. So that when Knight himself dies, the memory of Malcolm X and the anger flowing from his assassination will not, “The moon and stars may pass away/ But not the anger of that day,” (For Malcolm, A Year After 19-20).