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On "The Idea of Ancestry"


Shirley Lumpkin

Of the good poems in Poems from Prison , the one which has been most lauded and most frequently anthologized is "The Idea of Ancestry," sometimes called one of the best poems that has been written about the Afro-American conception of family history and human interconnection. In this poem, Knight used what came to be his trademark in punctuation, the slash mark, along with commas, colons, occasional unusual spellings, and spacing of words to indicate how the voice should sound saying the lines. He also found a particularly effective combination of the vocabulary of the drug culture, of black slang, and of concrete images to make the idea of ancestry come alive. The reader can see the speaker staring at the forty-seven pictures of his family members pasted on his prison wall and trace the details of the speaker's remembered connections with them. Equally, the reader is, like the speaker, brought up short during the warm, flowing intermingling of lives by the "gray stone wall," one of those stark, concrete, and vigorous images which Knight creates, that, like the speaker's drug addiction, separates the speaker from those he loves and to whom he is connected. A powerfully complex experience of the essential loneliness and relatedness of a man who is at once "all of them," but different from them, and having "no children to float in the space between" is created through the structure and language of the poem.

From Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 41: Afro-American Poets Since 1955. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris and Thadious M. Davis. Copyright © 1985 by the Gale Group.


Patricia Liggins Hill

In the poem "The Idea of Ancestry," which Paul Mariah has hailed as "the best poem of Black cultural history," Knight himself becomes "the violent space." In the first section of the poem, which flows in a Whitmanesque style, the poet is spatially defined in his prison cell:

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st & 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style,
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me;
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum),
and 5 cousins. I am now in love with a 7 yr old niece
(she sends me letters written in large block print, and
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).

I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews,
and 1 uncle. The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took
off and caught a freight (they say). He's discussed each year
when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in
the clan, he is an empty space. My father's mother, who is 93
and who keeps the Family Bible with everybody's birth dates
(and death dates) in it, always mentions him. There is
no place in her Bible for "whereabouts unknown."

The poet is conscious of the fact that all of his ancestors, except for his smiling, seven-year-old niece, stare at him across the space. He shares the same name as one grandfather, three cousins, three nephews, and one uncle. The uncle is an empty space in the family, just as the poet is. And yet in spite of the poet's being an empty space, he takes a Whitmanesque stance in the poem: He stands at the center of his universe, his ancestry, and sings, "I am all of them, they are all of me." But he realizes his separation from his ancestry as well: "they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee."

The prosaic quality of the first section of the poem is striking. For the most part, it takes on the narrative qualities of an autobiography and flows with long, rolling, sonorous lines controlled by the breath of the poet; declarative statements; story-like details; and specific references to people, places, and actions. The soothing, sweet-flowing rhythms in Part I reflect the poet's reminiscences about his relationships with his relatives--memories that are filled with warmth, gentleness, regret, and nostalgia.

In Part II, the pace quickens. The thoughts recollected by examining the pictures of his relatives on his cell wall (in Part I) lead the poet gradually to a retelling of his personal ritual of suffering: . . .

"Each Fall," the poet enacts the ritual of return to the home of his ancestry. From this mythic sense of time, the poet switches to direct references and specific definitions of time: "Last yr ... That night . . . . " The experience is relived, but with qualification: ". . . I had almost caught up with me." The rhythms in Part II explode with violence. Separations are made: "That night I looked at my grandmother/ and split/my guts were screaming for junk . . . . " The slashes, which are absent in Part I of the poem, crowd several activities into one sentence: "I walked barefooted in my grandmother's backyard/ I smelled the old/land and woods/I sipped cornwhiskey from fruit jars with the men/I flirted with the women/I had a ball till the caps ran out/and my habit came down." Words collide at the slashes to build up the tension evident in the countercurrents of the poet's life: "birthstream/I hitchhiked," "backyard/I smelled," "woods/I sipped cornwhiskey," "men/I flirted with the women," "junk/but I was almost/contented." The crackling sounds explode with meaning: The poet uses such terms as "croaker" (doctor) and "crib" (house) for their harsh alliterative impact.

In the last fines of the final stanza, the quickened pace exhausted, the drama rests:

This yr there is a grave stone wall damming my stream,
    and when
the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on
    my bunk
and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them,
they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no sons
to float in the space between.

"Time" and "space" have traveled full circle in the poem--back to the present condition of the poet in his cell. But whereas the space between the poet and the pictures described in the first stanza is chiefly the distance between his bunk and the wall where the pictures hang, the last notation of space in the poem involves the galvanization of the poet's genes--his sense of ancestry. He has no sons to hold his ritualistic space within the family. No sons of his are marked in the family Bible. This is a quiet time of despair for the poet: "they are farmers, I am a thief." Now, he is "the violent space," an entity separate from his ancestry. He is different: At this moment in the time and space of the poem, he has no physical linkage to his history, his family. And, unfortunately, because he is imprisoned, he can do nothing at present about the situation. The spatial/temporal movement of the poem is carried along by the tide of his music: from the very concrete reality of a prison cell, to a ritual revitalization of a sense of ancestry through a returning home, to this year when there will be no re-enactment of the ritual and no one to move for him: "I have no sons/to float in the space between." With this line the poem reaches an abrupt halt. The reader then becomes aware of the vastness of space, "the violent space," which follows the line.

The form of the poem as well as the idea of ancestry in the poem also represents the problem of ancestral lineage for the Black race as a whole. Many Blacks, such as Knight himself, can only trace their ancestral lineage back two or three generations because of the conditions of Black slavery which were imposed on them. In this context, Agnes Stein, in The Uses of Poetry, regards this poem as especially important for those such as Blacks "whose history as a group has been denied within a larger culture."

From "’The Violent Space’": The Function of the New Black Aesthetic in Etheridge Knight’s Prison Poetry." Black American Literature Forum. (1980).


Howard Nelson

"The Idea of Ancestry" is a poem about what it means to belong to a family—not just a nuclear family, but a large weaving of people that spreads out to include several branches and generation—and what it feels like to be isolated from it. The poem is in two parts. It begins with the poet lying on his prison bunk gazing at the forty-seven photographs of relatives he has taped to his wall. Looking at them, he gives a series of small catalogues of connectedness: "I know/ their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, they know mine . . . /I have at one time or another been in love with my mother,/ 1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (I went to the asylum) . . . /I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews,/and 1 uncle . . . ." The pictures and his thoughts make him feel part of a vital human flow—the ongoing, complex, living thing a family that has a sense of itself can be—but at the same time sharpens his loneliness. This is particularly so because the uncle at the end of the last list, it turns out, has long since vanished: "disappeared when he was 15, just took/off and caught a freight (they say)." He is at once a part of the family and "an empty space." Year after year he has been discussed by the family, especially by the ninety-three-year-old matriarch of the clan who is the keeper of the family Bible and the symbol of family roots and tradition. "There is no/ place in her Bible for 'whereabouts unknown."' The uncle's absence is a presence when the family gathers, and the poet, alone in his cell, ripped out of the fabric by a prison sentence, is haunted by the feeling that he has more in common with his uncle than a name.

The second section of the poem is a flashback to a family reunion which took place a year earlier. Both parts of the poem are set in fall, the season when the poet's yearning to get back to the family is always strongest—appropriate because of Thanksgiving as well as more subtle mortal reasons. With his characteristic vivid conciseness, Knight describes the longing to get back among family and family places—as basic as the instinctual drive of a migrating salmon—and the pleasure and ease of finally being on home ground again. But this time too he was pulled away from the family, in this case by a narcotics habit which forced him to leave and in turn led to his imprisonment. Then the poem returns to the present and the cell with its silent "47 black faces." The poet's thoughts have made him very restless: he paces, flops down on his bed—torn by his double sense of connectedness and isolation. He repeats a sort of invocation of the lone individual to the family spirit, spoken earlier as well—"I am all of them,/they are all of me, I am me, they are thee"—, then closes with another specter of loneliness and the breakdown of his life-lines within the family: "and I have no children/to float in the space between." In these last two statements the poem follows its fundamental curve, away from abstract formulation of an "idea of ancestry" into definition in terms of a field of emotions grounded in concrete situations and images. The idea may remain unparaphrasable, but when Knight has finished his poem it has become a solid, subtle, moving thing.

from "Belly Songs: The Poetry of Etheridge Knight." The Hollins Critic 18.5 (Dec., 1981)


Raymond Myles Hurd

This "double eye," which evidences Walt Whitman's strong influence on Knight's style, is most prominent in "The Idea of Ancestry," the black Southerner's best-known and most frequently anthologized work. Often hailed as "one of the best poems that [have] been written about the Afro-American conception of family history and human interconnection," it underlines Knight's discovery of a "particularly effective combination of the vocabulary of the drug culture, of black slang, and of concrete images to make the idea of ancestry come alive" (Lumpkin 204). Moreover, in identifying it as the "best poem of Black cultural history" (24), Paul Mariah reminds us of a deeper dimension of its impact. Indeed, Patricia Liggins Hill observes that the "form of the poem as well as the idea of ancestry in the poem also represents the problem of ancestral lineage for the Black race as whole. Many Blacks, such as Knight himself, can . . . trace their ancestral lineage back [only] two or three generations because of the conditions of Black slavery which were imposed on them" (118); analyzing Knight's effort from this broad historical purview, Agnes Stein, in The Uses of Poetry, "regards this poem as especially important for those such as Blacks 'whose history as a group has been denied within a larger culture"' (Hill 118). Yet, its meaning is in no sense restricted to a race-specific identification because in Knight's lines readers of various ethnological stripes can easily recognize descriptions of similar relatives from their own genealogies. In "The Idea of Ancestry" the yoked perspective of familial history and racial heritage allows Knight to focus on photographs of his Corinthian other relatives to establish a bond of intimacy between himself and them as he draws on a black prison argot to enhance his Whitmanesque technique. The three stanzas composing the poem's first section register a strong emotional charge for his multiracial readership in that they highlight the urgency of his need to "claim kin" with blood-related men and women he cannot speak or shake hands with because of the restrictions of his prison cell:

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black 
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (lst and 2nd), nieces, and nephews. They stare 
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know 
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, 
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; 
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee.

I have at one time or another been in love with my mother, 
1 grandmother, 2 sisters, 2 aunts (1 went to the asylum), 
and 5 cousins, I am now in love with a 7-year-old niece 
(she sends me letters written in large block print, and 
her picture is the only one that smiles at me).

I have the same name as 1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, 
and 1 uncle, The uncle disappeared when he was 15, just took 
off and caught a freight (they say). He's discussed each year 
when the family has a reunion, he causes uneasiness in 
the clan, he is an empty space, My father's mother, who is 93 
and who keeps the Family Bible with everybody's birth dates 
(and death dates) in it, always mentions him, There is no 
place in her Bible for "whereabouts unknown." (12)

Aware that the "soothing, sweet-flowing rhythms in Part I reflect the poet's reminiscences about his relationships with his relatives—memories that are filled with warmth, gentleness, regret and nostalgia" (Hill 117), readers also note that the poetic situation is one with which they can easily identify. In cataloging the men and women in the photos, Knight alludes to the similarities between himself and them, bonds manifesting themselves as male and distaff links between himself and his family's oldest members, mentally ill closet "skeletons," namesakes, cousins in the same age bracket, and a favorite niece. As we follow the branches of this Corinth-based family tree, we see that the controlling images of love and distance dominate the lines. Whereas the poet sets himself apart from his family's economic background—"they are farmers/I am a thief" (line 8)—he imagistically places himself within their midst in the reunion that the forty-seven pictures symbolically create: "I am all of them, they are all of me" (line 8).

Even in his self-classification as his family's incorrigible miscreant (and potential outcast), he never obliterates the connection with all these relations, including the uncle whose name still appears in the homestead Bible though his whereabouts remain unknown. Thus, Knight establishes another bond between himself and his African-American roots through a "black sheep"/"lost sheep" association. The first stanza's repetition of "know" accentuates the poet's spiritual communion with the other members of his clan, and "taped"—the poem's first word—directs our attention to adhesiveness, an important element of distanced love. Additionally, when Knight refers to the mostly unsmiling faces of his ancestors and mentions the "large block print" (line 12) characterizing his niece's penmanship, we concentrate on the image of his cell, an image sharpening the reality of his incarceration. And the mixture of words and numerals within the lines further emphasizes his estrangement from these Alcorn County blacks because of his heavy prison sentence.

In the poem's second section Knight enumerates contrasts between the past and the present as he shifts from a predominantly spatial to a largely temporal modality:

Each fall the graves of my grandfathers call me, the brown 
hills and red gullies of Mississippi send out their electric 
messages, galvanizing my genes. Last yr / like a salmon quitting 
the cold ocean—leaping and bucking up his birthstream / I
hitchhiked my way from LA with 16 caps in my pocket and a 
monkey on my back. And I almost kicked it with the kinfolks.
I walked barefooted in my grandmother's backyard/I smelled the old 
land and the woods / I sipped cornwhiskey from fruit jars with the men / 
I flirted with the women/I had a ball till the caps ran out 
and my habit came down. That night I looked at my grandmother 
and split/my guts were screaming for junk/but I was almost
contented/I had almost caught up with me.
(The next day in Memphis I cracked a croaker's crib for a fix.)

This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when 
the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my bunk 
and stare at 47 black faces across the space, I am all of them,
they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no children 
to float in the space between. (12-13)

Besides illustrating Knight's trademark virgules and frequent alliteration, these lines conjoin different patterns of imagery to underscore his geographical and spiritual remove from the blood-related environists of "the brown hills and red gullies of Mississippi" (lines 22-23). Significantly, one group of images is (perhaps unconsciously) associated with death and ties in with the poet's description of his literary creativity as a resurrection; the images simultaneously suggest that his separation from his family will be either of long term or permanent. References to burial sites, egg-laying salmon, bare feet, a physician described as a "croaker," and a glance at a grandmother in the shadow of darkness hint at a fixity of distance arguing against the possibility of a future communion. Moreover, in describing his arrival at a past Corinth family reunion by hitchhiking from California, Knight stresses the force calling him not to his grandfathers, but to their graves, which, in black folkloric terms, are said to sink when "drawing" an ill relative to his (or her) final resting place.

Juxtaposed against these death-related images is a second cluster emphasizing Knight's recollected sentient awareness of the persons and objects around him in his Southern stomping grounds. He smells the old land and woods, sips whiskey from mason jars, listens to the conversation of other Knight men, walks without shoes in his grandmother's backyard, and touches accommodating, unspoken-for women.

A third set of images, steeped in the language of the drug subculture, polarizes the two other clusters by pointing to the difference between what Knight was and what he has become. The sixteen cocaine-filled plastic vials that he brings with him from Los Angeles testify to his having a serious addiction, and his joy at the recalled family gathering is brought up short "when the caps ran out" (line 30) and his "guts" subsequently "were screaming for junk" (line 32). And nearness to forebears gives way to distance from them as he breaks into a Memphis doctor's home the next day for more illegal drugs or money to buy them. In the poem's final stanza the "gray stone wall damming [Knight's] stream" (line 35) emerges as both a time marker and a spatial divider. Locked up in the prison, the poet is unable to heed the beckoning to his hometown when autumn leaves once again fall.

from "The Corinth Connection in Etheridge Knight's 'The Idea of Ancestry.'" Notes on Mississippi Writers 25.1 (Jan., 1993).


David Seelow

In turning to black poet Etheridge Knight, the themes of grief, fatherhood, and fierceness are radically transformed. Grief is a given in Knight's world. The reality of imprisonment necessitates separation from loved ones. Bly's desire to return men to the forest is nothing but a romantic daydream to the prisoner, and the cell is hardly a domestic image. The central fact of Knight's (1986) poetry is enclosure:

Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black 
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead), grand-
fathers (both dead), brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, 
cousins (1st & 2nd), nieces and nephews. They stare 
across the space at me sprawling on my bunk. I know 
their dark eyes, they know mine. I know their style, 
they know mine. I am all of them, they are all of me; 
they are farmers, I am a thief, I am me, they are thee. (p. 12)

"The Idea of Ancestry" establishes the boundary between the prison and the world. What sustains the poet is family, which for Knight is extended and even tribal. Further, he shares his name and identity with eight relatives. The "I" is always communal, and, paradoxically, the poet is never, even in prison, isolated. The entire family, therefore, is enclosed.

The family exists in the larger prison of American society, and the walls of the larger prison, as Knight states, are those of racism. The poet speaks, then, for an ancestral heritage. Nonetheless, he calls the above poem "The Idea of Ancestry." Why? The counterpoint lyric clarifies the title's harsh irony:

This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when
the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my bunk 
and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them,
they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no sons 
to float in the space between. (pp. 12-13)

This lyric evokes the pain of imprisonment, but without pity. He simply calls attention to the reality of familial separation and its impact on the black man. The poet will bear no children, a situation repeating the reality of slavery and its forced separation of the father from his family. Etheridge is cut off from the future, and consequently, the past, making ancestry only an idea.

from "Loud Men: The Poetic Visions of Robert Bly, Ice Cube, and Etheridge Knight." The Journal of Men's Studies. 6.2 (Winter 1998).


JoyceAnn Joyce

In "The Idea of Ancestry," which also appeared first in Poems from Prison, the poet in his prison cell contemplates the pictures of his forty-seven living relatives and ancestors. The poet has the same name as "1 grandfather, 3 cousins, 3 nephews, and 1 uncle." His father’s mother "keeps the Family Bible" with all birth dates and death dates. The final stanza solidifies the poem’s reflection of an African worldview in which "Life, events, and phenomena derive meaning, value or significance through relationship to an organic whole (Ani 7):

This yr there is a gray stone wall damming my stream, and when
the falling leaves stir my genes, I pace my cell or flop on my bunk
and stare at 47 black faces across the space. I am all of them,
they are all of me, I am me, they are thee, and I have no children
to float in the space between.

At the time Knight wrote this poem, his son and daughter had not been born. Despite his lack of children, he remains connected to the African family. According to Marimba Ani, "The family or community is understood as a ‘whole.’" And since nothing of significance is merely physical, the community itself becomes a metaphysical reality. We say that the African family includes the "dead," the "living," and the "yet unborn" (7). Thus Knight echoes an African worldview when he says, "I am all of them / they are all of me, I am me, they are thee..."

"The Idea of Ancestry" reflects the commonality and interdependence of Black family in America….

from "The Poetry of Etheridge Knight: A Reflection of an African Philosophical/Aesthetic Worldview." The Worchester Review 19:1-2 (1998).


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