Melville House Books

Late last month, marking the tenth anniversary of the first ever Furious Flower conference, a second Furious Flower gathering was held at James Madison University, with an all-star cast of poets including Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Ethelbert Miller, Rita Dove, Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and more. In a report by Jamie D. Walker for SeeingBlack.com, organizer Joanne Gabbin explains that the first conference “celebrated a century that gave rise to the new Negro Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement and witnessed the genius of such poets as Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Margaret Walker, Robert Hayden, and Gwendolyn Brooks,” while the second conference aims to “usher in the promise of Black poetic expression in the twenty-first century.” Among the readings, “Rita Dove . . . read a lively poem in honor of Hattie McDaniel . . . Askia Tourè read a moving poem about Pharoah Sanders . . . Ethelbert Miller read an intense, passionate poem called ‘Emmitt Till Looks at a Photo Album from Iraq,’” and Haki Madhubuti read a poem “called ‘Butt for Sale’; a scathing attack on the personal and political life of renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.