Ted Joans and the (B)reach of the African American Literary Canon

This essay deals partly with issues of canonicity, partly with a critical evaluation of the work of the late poet Ted Joans and demands for his inclusion in the canon of African American writing. (1) I focus on Joans, not because he has the most urgent case for such appraisal, but in response to assertions of blindness or bias on the part of individuals with influence on the canon-making process. Joans' supporters claim the canonizers treated him unjustly. Is this allegation legitimate? What indeed are the qualifications for inclusion in the canon? Who establishes them? Are the criteria unchanging? My concern here is the reach of the canon of African American writing--its scope or magnitude--and its breaches: what is omitted that should be included, what is included that could be left out. Was Ted Joans excluded from the canon because it cannot contain every black author? Was he excluded by partiality or oversight, as his defenders allege? Or was he judged insufficiently important for inclusion? Though he has enthusiastic supporters, there currently is no substantive body of criticism on Joans. (2) If he had received more critical attention, would this have facilitated his entry into the canon or militated against it? The issue of the reach of the canon is more crucial now than in the past. Back in the seventies, I heard the late June Jordan argue that the notion of a black literary canon was premature because there were not enough works of sufficient quality to constitute one. Two recent efforts to propose a canon, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (1997) and Call and Response. The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (1998), have 2665 and 2039 pages respectively, and the significance of the majority of the work they contain is largely incontrovertible. The section of the Norton dealing with literature after 1970 begins on page 2011; the pre-1970 material constitutes about 80% of the book. The material in the Riverside covering 1960 to the present begins on page 1343; the pre-1960 material accounts for 65%. In both cases, the period that Ms. Jordan (a canonical figure herself, included in both anthologies) believed to be largely destitute of significance today makes up the bulk of the African American literary tradition. (3) A decade before the publication of the Norton, Cornel West had questioned the legitimacy of such a project, arguing that "it is difficult to imagine an Afro-American canon formation that does not domesticate and dilute the literary power and historical significance" of those authors West considered "major figures" (199). With due respect to West, this is unconvincing. Have Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience, Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," or Ginsberg's "Howl" been domesticated and diluted as a result of their inclusion in the American canon? If one reads African American literature as oppositional or revisionary, why would juxtaposing it with "mainstream" American literature not keep the particular qualities of black literature intact? What can lead to dilution is the use of excerpts rather than complete works, a frequently unavoidable characteristic of anthologies and one of the reasons many teachers shun their use. For one may argue that the Norton and Riverside anthologies do not constitute the canon of African American literature per se but are efforts to assemble a tradition in a marketable form that may become standardized. Obviously a canon is that body of works judged worthy of preservation and still relevant pedagogically, but it should exist apart from commercial considerations. Ishmael Reed, firmly situated in the canon, has referred to the Norton as a "feminist propaganda volume" and criticized what he feels is the perfunctory treatment given to "the black writers of the 1960s," who he sees as "the most influential writers since the Imagists of the turn of the century" (Dick 230). Reed further claims there has been an unwarranted "inflation" of value in the assessment of black writers. …