Prophets for a New Day (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Walker
- First Published: 1970
- Type of Work: Poem
- Genres: Poetry
- Subjects: African Americans, 1960’s, United States or Americans, Revolutionaries, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Apocalypse
Prophets for a New Day reprises the heroic sacrifice of the revolutionary 1960's in the United States, a decade which featured the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy, as well as the Watts riots and the American forces in Vietnam, where a disproportionate number of those who died were African American.
Stanza I appropriates the Old Testament personalities and narrative of the Hebrew captivity and ordeal in a modern discourse that is homiletic and exhortative. It announces the threshold of an apocalyptic time....
[The entire page is 682 words long]
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