Notes & Acknowledgments

 

We gratefully acknowledge the original publishers of Margaret Danner’s poems reprinted in this folio. All of Danner’s books and chapbooks are now out of print, and among her original publishers, only Broadside Press, which merged with Lotus Press in 2015 to form Broadside Lotus Press, continues to operate today.

Thank you to Broadside Lotus Press for permission to reprint “The Convert,” “The Christmas Soiree and the Missing Object of African Art,” “These Beasts and the Benin Bronze,” and “The Small Bells of Benin” from Impressions of African Art Forms in the Poetry of Margaret Danner (Broadside Press, 1960). “The Painted Lady” and “Best Loved of Africa” first appeared in Poetry (October 1956). “The Elevator Man Adheres to Form,” “The Visit of the Professor of Aesthetics,” “The Slave and the Iron Lace,” and “Through the Varied Patterned Lace” were published in To Flower (Hemphill Press First Edition, 1963). Thank you to the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library for access to archival materials quoted and reproduced in this issue of Poetry.

The item pictured on the following page was discovered by Liesl Olson in the SCRC’s Danner archive; the “Friends of Margaret Danner” was a Detroit community organization that sought to raise funds for Danner to visit Africa in 1960. (The Friends of Margaret Danner’s chairperson, Sylvia King, is thanked in the front matter to Impressions of African Art Forms in the Poetry of Margaret Danner; King also wrote the “About the Author” note for that volume.) We welcome any information that our readers might provide about Danner’s literary community, professional life, and bibliography in our ongoing effort to document the history of Black poets and Poetry magazine.

We would also like to express our gratitude to the Danner family historian, Robin Washington, who provided valuable information about the Danner family’s engagement with poetry across multiple generations. We hope this folio will encourage future scholars, and teachers, and readers to learn more about Danner’s life and work.