ᴇᴛʜᴇʀɪᴅɢᴇ ᴋɴɪɢʜᴛ: ᴛʜᴇ ɪᴅᴇᴀ ᴏғ ᴀɴᴄᴇsᴛʀʏ

                71 - 75

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            Life and Work

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prominent black activist and artists who come of

age in 1960s experience dramatic social and intellectual

rebirths while serving time in prison

The Autobiography of Malcolm X, much of youth as

small criminal, become orator and civil rights leader

Eldridge Cleaver - Soul on Ice, series of essays,

trace development of criminal into leader of Black Power

Movement

George Jackson - Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters

of George Jakcosn, 18 yr old petty criminal, incarcerated

for life, reinvents himself as revolutionary

prison connect them with revolutionaries, intellectuals,

spiritual leaders

Eldridge Knight (1931-91), emphasis on personal emphasis

1960-68 - in Indiana prison

dropped out of school at 16, joined army, served in Korean 

War as medical technician

injured by shrapnel, addicted to opiates

after release from army in 1960, spent time in pool halls, bars,

underground gambling parlors, immersed in urban slang

see himself in community of black poets, correspond with

Dudley Randall, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez (married

from 1968-70)

Randall arrange for Poems from Prison published a year

before Knight's release

forefront of Black Arts Movement, along with Amiri Baraka,

Haki Madhubuti, Sanchez

editor in chief of anthology, Black Voices from Prison

1977 - go on methadone to stop using heroin

1990 - BA in American Poetry, Criminal Justice

early 1990s - temporary teaching positions at University

of Pittsburgh, University of Hartford, Lincoln University

1991 - died of lung cancer

obituary in The New York Times included his own quote

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               Analysis

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describe attempt to survive loneliness and isolation of 
prison existence

47 pictures on wall: father, mother, grandmother (1 dead),
grandfathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st, 2nd), nieces, nephews

connections with family members defined by resemblance,
shared way of being in world, blood ancestry

women he loved: mother, 1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts,
5 cousins, 7 yr old niece

same name as: 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, 1 uncle

matriarch keeps Bible with birth dates and names

one uncle disappeared after hopping train at 15

part 2: connection to Mississippi landscape

journey likened to salmon

cravings to Memphis, broke into doctor's office for drugs

make do with photos in place of yearly family reunion

close to being prose poem, line breaks give it shape

part 2 uses slashes (virgules in formal analysis) used instead
of periods

abbreviate year to yr, shorten perceived duration of year in prison