Craft: Henry Dumas

Henry Dumas (1934-1968), whose work Toni Morrison called “some of the most beautiful, moving, and profound poetry and fiction that I have ever read in my life,” did not live to see most of his poetry or fiction in print. On May 23, 1968 he was shot and killed by a New York City Transit cop in the 125th Street Station, another victim of extrajudicial police murder of Black people.

Dumas: “I shall fly to this place and lean…”

Dumas was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, and moved to Harlem at age 10. He studied at City College, joined the Air Force, worked at IBM, then taught at Southern Illinois University’s Experiment in Higher Education in East St. Louis, IL. His poems are of the style and moment of the Black Arts Movement, yet patterned with his own idiosyncrasies and passionate syntax. He could write as powerfully about political ideas as about romance or nature, and his poems embody an essential bravery and psychological sturdiness that can’t be taught.