Clarence Major

Biography

Clarence Major was born 1936 in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Chicago. As a teenager he started drawing and painting, writing poetry and fiction.

In his early twenties he started publishing his own literary magazine, Coercion Review, which featured poets and writers such as Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. As a teenager Major was influenced by the monumental Van Gogh Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, February 1 – April 16, 1950.

After a stint in the Air Force, two marriages, children, and two divorces, he left the Midwest and moved to New York City in December 1966. His first novel, All Night Visitors, was published in 1969 and his first collection of poems, Swallow the Lake, the following year. He briefly worked as a research analyst for Simulmatics, under the direction of sociologist Dr. Sol Chaneles. Major analyzed news coverage of the 1960s riots. He also did field work on the riots, in Detroit and Milwaukee, before turning, in 1967, to teaching.

First, he taught in Harlem at the New Lincoln School, in a summer program. He later taught modern American literature courses and creative writing workshops in universities. His first solo exhibition of paintings was at Sarah Lawrence College in the library in the early 1970s.

During this time he was also giving public readings of his poetry. He served on the editorial staff of several literary periodicals (such as Caw! and The Journal of Black Poetry) and wrote a regular column for American Poetry Review. He was the first editor of American Book Review. He read his poetry at the Guggenheim Museum, the Folger Theatre and in universities, theaters and cultural centers.

He joined the Fiction Collective in 1974. Major edited High Plains Literary Review for several years. On a State Department-sponsored trip in 1975 he was a participant at the International Poetry Festival in Struga, Yugoslavia, where he read his work with Leopold Sedar Senghor and other poets from around the world. In 1977, with John Ashbery and other poets from various countries, Major read at the Poetry International in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Although he had been painting all along, after moving to California in 1989 he showed his paintings more frequently in galleries.

In 1991 Major served as fiction judge for the National Book Awards. In 1987 he served twice on the National Endowment for the Arts Awards panels; and in 1997–98 he served as judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has judged state-sponsored literary contests in Ohio, New York, Washington, Colorado and California.

Major is distinguished professor emeritus of 20th-Century American Literature at the University of California at Davis. His literary archives are in the Givens Collection of African American Literature, Anderson Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. For what Professor Linda Furgerson Selzer calls a "groundbreaking study" of Clarence Major's art and literary work, see Keith E. Byerman's book, The Art and Life of Clarence Major (ISBN 978-0-8203-3055-6), Athens: University of Georgia Press (June 2012).

Teaching

Major has taught literature and/or creative writing at Brooklyn College, Queens College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Washington, Howard University, University of Maryland, University of Colorado, Temple University, Binghamton University, the University of California at Davis and on a Fulbright-Hays Exchange award he taught American culture at the University of Nice, in France, 1981–1983. He left the University of Colorado in 1989 and he taught at the University of California Davis for eighteen years before his retirement in 2007.

Recognition

Major won a National Council on the Arts Award for his poetry collection Swallow the Lake in 1970, and the following year was awarded a New York Cultural Foundation grant for poetry. Reflexe et Ossature (1982), the French translation of Reflex and Bone Structure (1975), was nominated for the Prix Maurice Coindreau (1982). Such Was The Season (1987) was a Literary Guild book club selection in 1988. The same year The New York Times Book Review recommended it on its annual "Summer Reading" list. Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar (1988) was cited by The New York Times Book Review as a "Notable Book of The Year" 1988. In 1990 his short story collection, Fun & Games, was nominated for the Los Angeles Book Critics Award. Major won a Bronze Medal as a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999 for Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958–1998 (Copper Canyon Press). He won the Pushcart Prize for the short story "My Mother and Mitch", in 1989. In 2002 he won the Stephen Henderson Poetry Award for Outstanding Achievement, presented by the African American Literature and Culture Society. His novel My Amputations (1986) won the Western States Book Award and was republished in 2008 with an introduction by Lawrence Hogue. Dirty Bird Blues won the Sister Circle Book Award in 1999. Major was awarded the International Literary Hall of Fame award (Chicago State University) in 2001. Major received the "2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts" from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, 2015. He was awarded the "The 26th Annual PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award 2016" on December 3rd, 2016. In January 2017 From Now On: New and Selected Poems was nominated for the 2017 Northern California Book Award sponsored by The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association.

Anthologies

Major has edited several anthologies, most recently Calling the Wind: 20th Century African-American Short Stories (1993) and The Garden Thrives: 20th Century African-American Poetry (1996).

His own work has appeared in the following anthologies: The Norton Anthology of American Literature, The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, Postmodern Poetry in America 1950 to the Present, Men of Our Time: Male Poetry in Contemporary America, Dynamics of Violence, Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, The World's Best Poetry: Supplement IV, Words On The Page, The World In Your Hands, Mirrors: An Introduction to Literature, The Urban Adventures, American Negro Poetry, Where Is Vietnam: American Poets Respond, In A Time of Revolution: Poems From Our Third World, Poems of War Resistance, A Punishment For Peace, Natural Process: An Anthology of New Black Poetry, Black Out Loud: An Anthology of Modern Poems by Black Americans, Inside Outer Space: New Poems From The Space Age, Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry, The Movement Toward a New America, Dices or Black Bones: Black Voices of The Seventies, Black American Literature 1780–Present, Fine Frenzy: Enduring Themes in Poetry, The Modern Age: Literature, The Real Imagination, You Better Believe It: Black Voices in English, Black Spirits: A Festival of New Black Poets in America, New Black Voices, Starting With Poetry, From The Belly of The Shark, The Poetry of Black America: Anthology of the 20th Century, Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems, The Liberal Art of Interpretation, A New Rhetoric, The Pushcart Prize: The Best of The Small Presses, Contemporary Writing from The Continents, The Point: Where Teaching and Writing Intersect, The Jazz Poetry Anthology; Giavani Poeti Americani (Italy), Heartshape in the Dust: An Anthology of Black American Poetry (Yugoslavia), American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century, Gondola a Signore Signore Gondola: Venice in 20th Century American Poetry (Italy), Govereci Boben (Poland?), The Writing on The Wall, Merry Christmas Baby and others. Fiction: Children of The Night, American Made, Calling the Wind, The Avant Garde Today: An International Anthology, Statements, Statements 2, The Sound of Writing, Pushcart XV, Breaking Ice, 19 Necromancers From Now, Ten Times Black: Stories From The Black Experience, Not Normal Illinois, American Made, Love Stories and Writing Under Fire: Stories Of The Vietnam War and others.

Periodicals

His fiction, poetry, nonfiction and book reviews have appeared in periodicals among them, Harvard Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The American Poetry Review, The Black Scholar, The Baltimore Sun Magazine Supplement, Upstate [Rochester] Sunday Magazine, The Denver Post, Hampton Road Guide and Journal, The Rocky Mountain News, The San Jose Mercury News, Essence, The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea, Ploughshares, Witness, Boulevard, Michigan Quarterly Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Trace, Negro Digest, The Nickel Review, [Chicago] Sun-Times Showcase, John O'Hare Journal, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, New Myths/MSS, American Review, The Magazine of New Writing, Contact, Folger Poetry Broadside, The Literary Review, Mundus Artium: A Journal of International Literature and the Arts, National Guardian, New York Poetry, The Outsider, Poetry Miscellany, Unmuzzled OX, Yardbird Reader, Works, Callaloo, African American Review, New American Review, Brilliant Corners, A Gathering of The Trides, Baa Sima (Accra), Black Orpheus (Nigeria), El carno emplumado (Mexico), East and West (India), Fiddlehead (Canada), Gedicht (Antwerp), Interspace (France), In Their Own Words (Italy), New Departures (England), Poetry (England), Pravda (Moscow), Quadrant (Australia), Tautara (Turkey), Vinduet (Norway), and Literatura na Świecie (Poland).

Visual arts

Major studied drawing and painting under the direction of painter Gus Nall (1919–1995) from 1952 to 1954. Major also attended sketch and lecture classes during the same period in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. Among his teachers there was Addis Osborne (1914–2011).

Major's apprentice art work was first shown to the public in a group show in the mid-1950s at Gales Gallery on Sixty-Third Street, Chicago. The gallery owner, Mrs. Edna Powell Gale, featured the works of local artists.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge, University Art Gallery Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Sarah Lawrence College, Kresge Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, Hamilton Club Gallery, Paterson, New Jersey, Phoenix Gallery, Sacramento CA, Exploding Head Gallery, Sacramento CA, Blue Hills Gallery, Winters, CA, Main Street Gallery, Winters CA, and many other venues.

His art work is in many private collections as well as in several public one: Indiana State University, Terre Haute; Passaic County Community College Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art; the Schacknow Museum of Fine Art, Plantation, Florida; and The Linda Matthews MARBL Collection at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

His paintings have appeared in many group shows at such galleries as John Natsoulas Gallery (Davis, CA), University of Rochester Art Gallery (Rochester, New York), Denenberg Fine Arts Gallery, Los Angeles, Anita Shapolsky Gallery (New York, New York), 40 Acres Gallery (Sacramento, CA), Main Street Gallery (Winters, CA), Nelson Gallery, University of California at Davis.

Many of his paintings have appeared on covers of his own books, among them Myself Painting, Waiting for Sweet Betty, and "Down and Up," three poetry collections. His novel Emergency Exit contains reproductions of his paintings and his essay collection, Necessary Distance, is illustrated with his drawings. A book on his art and literature, Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African-American Postmodernist by Bernard Bell, appeared in 1998. Conversations with Clarence Major by Nancy Bunge was published in 2002. While focused largely on literature, both books contain Major's views on painting.

Exhibition catalogs: Black: A Celebration of African American Art in Sacramento-Area Collections, 2008; Configurations, paintings by Clarence Major, Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge MA 2010; Myself Painting, paintings by Clarence Major, University Gallery, The Center for Performing Arts, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 2011; The Writers' Brush: An Exhibition of Art Work by Writers by Donald Friedman and John Wronoski, Introduction by Joseph McElroy, New York: Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation, 2014 (ISBN 978-1-4675-7558-4).

Major curated the exhibition of paintings Spirit Made Visible, containing the works of Robert Colescott, John Abduljaami, Mike Henderson, Oliver Jackson, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Joe Overstreet, Raymond Saunders, Clarence Major and others, at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, California, May 9 – 31, 1992.

Exhibitions

Education

Major has attended or received degrees from the following institutions.