Gwendolyn Brooks, Photo courtesy of prx.org
"Confronting the Warpland: Black Poets of Chicago" is a radio documentary produced and written by Ed Herrmann and narrated by Richard Steele, who has a very clear voice. It is also a production of the Poetry Foundation. This piece was first broadcast on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio during February of 2008.
The documentary discusses the history of African American Poets in Chicago, mainly focusing on the 1930s throughout the 1950s. It features several poets, such as Sterling Plumpp, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker, who read their poetry during the broadcast. The narrator also discusses how the move of many African Americans from the South to the North began a new beginning of various genres of music, such as Blues and Jazz.
In my opinion as a listener, the main problem with this production is its length, which is exactly 58 minutes and 46 seconds long. As the piece starts, the narrator briefly speaks about the history of Black poets and as his speaking, bouncy Jazz music plays in the background. Since Jazz is one of my favorite genres of music, the beginning grabbed my attention and made me tune in for the rest of the broadcast. However, I found myself tuning out every now and then because it was extremely long.
For me, this was a great topic because I am interested in American history, specifically the history of art and music. However, the length took away from the entertainment value of this listening documentary. In order to fix this, the producer could have considered cutting out a couple of the poems that the poets narrate. He also could have minimized the amount of historical stories that they told because many of them were saying the same concepts. This would have probably left him at 35 minutes, which would have been a more appropriate length for the topic and just enough to keep the listeners' attention all the way through.
