Tolson, Melvin B. - Patricia R. Schroeder (essay date December 1983)
Patricia R. Schroeder (essay date December 1983)
SOURCE: "Point and Counterpoint in Harlem Gallery," in CLA Journal, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, December, 1983, pp. 152-68.
[In the following essay, Schroeder discusses Tolson's Harlem Gallery and asserts that "the character of the Curator and the central dilemma in which he is placed provide a perfect vehicle for an examination of social divisions and conflicting roles."]
Although first published in 1965, Melvin B. Tolson's highly allusive poem Harlem Gallery has yet to attract much critical recognition. With the exception of an unpublished dissertation, a rather general critical biography, a handful of reviews, and some widely scattered articles, the poem has been virtually ignored; as Robert M. Farnsworth has recently expressed it, "Critics and scholars have been ducking the challenge of his [Tolson's] work for years." The reasons for this neglect of a modern masterpiece...
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