Craft: Calvin C. Hernton

Calvin C. Hernton (1932—2001) was a sociologist, poet, and cofounder of the Umbra Poets Workshop, one of the first post-civil rights radical Black literary groups. Hernton was, along with other Black poets like David Henderson, Tom Dent, Lorenzo Thomas, and Ishmael Reed, associated with the Beat/Black Mountain poets, but Umbra itself embraced a range of political affiliations such as neo-Garveyite Pan-Africanism, Marxism, and liberal-Left progressivism. Hernton also worked with the Institute of Phenomenological Studies (1965–69), and studied under R. D. Laing. He taught Black Studies at Oberlin College from 1970 until his retirement in 1999. Umbra was part of a much broader artistic movement, the Black Arts Movement, which included not only poetry, but theater, dance, jazz music, and visual art.

Hernton stares “like some kind of spark / From a way-off star” as Langston Hughes looks over his shoulder

Besides three book of poetry, Hernton also wrote a novel, five books of nonfiction, and three plays. Hernton’s poetry was influenced by both T.S. Eliot and Langston Hughes. The poems are political, but not in the agitprop way of Baraka’s poems of the same period. Hernton’s aren't melded to a specific subject position. Hernton first decided to dedicate himself to poetry following a small workshop he took at Robert Hayden’s house near Fisk University.