The path of creation.(works of Afaa Michael Weaver)

• Published in: Poets & writers Vol. 35; no. 6; pp. 34 - 40
• Main Authors: Masiki, Trent, Chappell, Webb
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Poets & Writers, Inc 01.11.2007; Poets & Writers, Incorporated
• Subjects: African American poets; African Americans; Biography; Chinese languages; Creative writing; Cultural identity; English literature; Ideology; Language history; Literary criticism; Poetry; Poets; Politics; Self concept
• ISSN: 0891-6136

The authors who were a part of the Black Arts movement felt that the responsibility of African American art was to address the cultural, economic, and political needs of the community. Though its precepts no longer swayed him by the time he published Water Song, Weaver was highly influenced by the Black Arts movement when he was young, and its communal impulse continues to guide him in his role as Cave Canem Elder, an honorary title shared by Lucille Clifton, Michael S. Harper, Marilyn Nelson, Sonia Sanchez, and Al Young.\n The poem, titled "Composition for White Critics Who Think African-American Poets Cannot Work in Contexts of Pure Concerns for Language and Post-Post Modern Twenty-first Century Inventiveness in Lyric Expression Due to Their SelfLimiting Concerns With Language as a Means of Self-Expression and Racial/ Cultural Identity in Poetry That Is Ultimately Perhaps Beautiful However Too Trite and Too Folksy to Be Post [II] Theorist Efficacy," is a polemic against poetry critics and a parody of Language poetry.