Craft: James A. Emanuel

James A. Emanuel (1921-2013) was one of the most neglected, but finest American poets; he made approximately 345 poems over 13 books. Though he was born in Alliance, Nebraska, he permanently became an expatriate in Europe and lived there until his death.

Emanuel’s poems were highly influenced by jazz, the haiku, and psychological realism. He was a craftsman of poetry, and his attention to creating from nothing is central to his conception:

If a poem came to me fully made, I would have to change it as the words took shape on paper, assuming paper to be its final imprinted surface, because the final creator, thinking as his hand (or machine part) approached the paper, might conceive of an improved word or punctuation mark. Such is the prerogative, the necessity of the creator at work: to bring the product at hand to a state of perfection.

Langston Hughes became Emanuel’s early mentor and in the 1960s, Emanuel taught the first course on Black poets at City College. Though of the same generation as Gwendolyn Brooks, Emanuel isn’t as well known (or known at all) as many of the Black poets who appear alongside him in multiple anthologies.

James A. Emanuel in 2011