James Emanuel (born June 15, 1921[2] – September 28, 2013) was a poet and scholar from Alliance, Nebraska.
Emanuel, who is ranked by some critics as one of the best[3][4] and most neglected poets of the 20th century,[5] published more than 300 poems, 13 individual books, an influential anthology of African-American literature, an autobiography, and more.
He is also credited with creating a new literary genre, jazz-and-blues haiku, often read with musical accompaniment.
His childhood and adolescence were marked by racism which Emanuel says he owes less to the town's egalitarianism than to the more ideological drift of his family conversations and to his general popularity and success in school.
while working as civilian chief in the pre-induction section of the Army and Air Force Induction Station.
As he studied Hughes he realized the lack of attention that black writers received and decided to take matters into his own hands.
His desire was to focus on racial identity, race consciousness, and awareness of an attention to his literary forebears and contemporaries.
[3] Critics have put forward several reasons for Emanuel's poetry being neglected by the larger literary world, including the fact that he wrote more traditional poetic forms, that he left the United States, and the fact that he refused to take part in the politically correct world of Black academia.
Almost uniformly they employ traditional patterns of rhythm and rhyme, but occasionally reflect blues and jazz forms learned first, perhaps, from the poetry of Langston Hughes.
[10] His poems reflect a racial concern and as his friend Marvin Holdt said that it also expresses the aspects of the black American experience in America, treated with bitterness and revolt.
[12] His poems include "Christ, One Morning",[13] "Snowman",[14] "Bojangles and Jo", and many others Emanuel is also credited with creating a new literary genre, jazz-and-blues haiku, which he read to musical accompaniment throughout Europe and Africa.
[8] This anthology, and Emanuel's work as an educator, heavily influenced the birth of the African-American literature genre.