Primitive: The Art and Life of Horace H. Pippin

A lyrical and biographical reflection on the art and life of Horace H. Pippin—the best-known African American artist of his time—Primitive offers a searching critique of the condescension to African American folk art as supposedly “primitive,” and it also critiques the underestimation of African American life and imagination in the broader American consciousness. Award-winning poet Janice N. Harrington connects readers to this fascinating, odds-defying artist, all while underscoring the human craving for artistic expression.

ISBN-13: 9781942683209

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.

Publication Date: 10-11-2016

Pages: 104

Product Dimensions: 8.80(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.20(d)

Janice N. Harrington writes poetry and children's books. She grew up in Alabama and Nebraska, and both those settings, especially rural Alabama, figure largely in her writing. Her first book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (2007), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize from BOA Editions and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She is also the author of The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home (BOA Editions, 2011). Her children's books, The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County (2007) and Going North (2004), both from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have won many awards and citations, including a listing among TIME Magazine's top 10 children's books of 2007 and the Ezra Jack Keats Award from the New York Public Library in 2005. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is also the winner of a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship for Poetry. Harrington's poetry appears regularly in American literary magazines. She has worked as a public librarian and as a professional storyteller, performing at festivals around the country, including the National Storytelling Festival. She currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Table of Contents

I Now Why Do I Want to Get Up So High 1
Picture of the Poet and Horace H. Pippin Before the Perigee2

II If a Man Knows Nothing But Hard Times 3
A Primitive Portrait 4


III I’ve Seen Men Die 6
Like This, Like That 7
Night March, 369th Infantry 8
A Canel 9
Finding the Words 10
Shrapnel 11
The Speller 12
Form and Shapes 13
Fire 16
Hard 17
Horace Pippin’s Red 18


IV War Brought Out All the Art in Me 20
Tell My Heart 21
Losing the Way, 1930 22
Prophet 23
Surface Decoration 24
The Subtlety of Blue 25


V You Have Requested an Explanation of the Picturr 26
Domino Players, 1943 27
The Satisfactions of a Limited View 28
Topoanalysis 29
Victorian Interior, 1945 31
1939 32
The Trapper Returning Home, 1941 33
Lilies, 1941 34
In a Painted Room 35
Why, Oh Why, the Doily? 36
White Flesh 41
The Warped Table, a Still Life, 1940 42
Birmingham Meeting House 43
Harmonizing 44
Contemplation, the Art of 46
Newly Discovered Portrait of America’s First Black President 48
by Horace H. Pippin (1888-1946)


VI Now I Know How You Feel Alone 49
Erotica 50
Definitions 51
Commitment 54
My Wife Is Not Home at This Time 55


VII Then a Hand Lightly Layed on Me. Then a Still Voice 56
Blessing 57


Notes 58
Acknowledgements 64 Show More