Understanding Russell Atkins’s Poetry through His Plays

African American poet Russell Atkins (1926–2024) is an esteemed figure among readers and critics of experimental English poetry. His honours and awards include an Honorary PhD from Cleveland State University (1976), an Individual Artist Grant from the Ohio Arts Council (1978), a Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from the Poetic League (1997), a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellowship (1956), appointment to the literature advice panel of the Ohio Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts (1973–1976), and many more recognitions of his influence and significance. Atkins is widely regarded as a "poet's poet" whose prodigious body of work is both highly original and deeply resistant to conventional analysis. Atkins's verse plays, which he referred to by several different names (poetic dramas, plays in poetry, poems as dramas, poems in play form, and poetry-dramas) have received little academic attention compared to the wealth of analysis on his poems. However, Atkins's relatively understudied poetry-dramas offer important insight into the theories, techniques, and themes employed in his verse. This article provides a close focus on the poetry-dramas as literarily valuable in their own right and as an interpretive lens for Atkins's well-respected but difficult poetry.