Samuel James Cornish

In late 2015, Sam Cornish was diagnosed with an hereditary cardiac amyloid condition. He lived with it for more than two years before succumbing to a major stroke in August 2018. He is buried at the National Cemetery in Bourne, MA.

Perhaps his most comprehensive multidisciplinary achievement was his final book of poems, Dead Beats. Published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2011, it includes 11 of his black-and-white photographs. In Dead Beats, he reclaims his generational identity with and affection for the Beats. Michael T. Steffen, writing for the Wilderness House Literary Review, commented on the “magic of joining words” that the title implies, but it is even more typically Sam Cornish’s inclination to remind the reader that these writers, often depicted as vital, larger-than-life personae, are now a part of history. On the jacket blurb, Martha Collins comments that “Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.”

In 2008, Cornish became Boston’s first poet laureate after a committee of half a dozen individuals from various neighborhoods in Boston and diverse walks of life selected him among a large group of applicants. In the mission statement accompanying his application, he promised to focus on outreach and after assuming the post, he outlined his goals: “I try to be the person to bring a poem to people who might not read poetry, or those who want to talk to a poet about the craft.”). An interdepartmental e-mail from the Mayor’s Office states that in the first year of his term as poet laureate, he “made over 40 appearances at schools, libraries, community centers, bookstores and other venues. Most of these appearances have been in workshop format. Mr. Cornish typically reads from his work, talks about his role as the poet laureate, and hears poetry from participants.” In addition, he was given an office at the Copley Square Branch of the Boston Public Library, where he held meetings and out of which he held classes and scheduled special events. He also represented the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Tourism at various public events and seasonal occasions at which once again, his objective was to bring poetry to a wider audience.

After retiring from teaching in 2004, Cornish focused on writing and collaborating. He wrote An Apron Full of Beans, published by Cavankerry Press in 2008. It was a ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year finalist and finalist in the Milt Kessler Poetry Award for 2009. Adam Tavel, writing for the Café Review had the following reaction:

Two years later, Cornish struck up a relationship with the owner of Zoland Books, who published two collections of his poetry. The first one, Folks Like Me (1992) received a fair amount of attention from several periodicals. Choice magazine considered it a “powerful collection” and “highly recommended.” Library Journal notes the “wealth of history” contained in poems about Joe Louis, John Coltrane, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and recommended it for most collections. Maya Angelou contributed a back cover blurb, comparing the book’s contents with the artistry of Ray Charles’ blues. The other book, Cross A Parted Sea, features poems darker than Cornish's previous works and imply a parting of the waves — both in America and in his relationship with poetry. The book is more profane than his earlier work, with frequent racial slurs and crude language. Cornish had begun to write in voices other than his own. When reading these poems aloud, he would preface his performance with disarming comments apologizing for “using dirty words.” These poems are also based on historical subjects.

As subject: critical article in Contemporary Literature, Fall/Winter 1992; extended review of book 1935 in Kenyon Review, Fall 1992; 1935 subject of review on “All Things Considered,” National Public Radio, 1991; Review of Cross A Parted Sea, Winter Issue, Boston Review of Books (1996). Review in Shenandoah (1973) for Generations; Review in Southern Humanities Review (1992) for 1935; Reviews in Publishers Weekly (various dates) for Grandmother's Pictures (several editions). Critical Study: Writing America Black by C. K. Doreski  (Oxford University Press

In 1990, Cornish's memoir titled 1935 was published by Ploughshares Books. A combination of prose and poetry, it follows a timeline paralleling his life to that point. It was reviewed on NPR’s "All Things Considered" by Alan Cheuse:

In 1986, Cornish was named director of the literature project called Boston Contemporary Writers for the MBTA Orange Line, under the auspices of UrbanArts, Inc of Boston, and oversaw the installation of literary monuments at subway stations along the MBTA’s Orange Line until 1988. The overall project, called Arts in Transit, was funded by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and managed by UrbanArts. Cornish’s role was typical of his approach to literature – that it be made more visible and accessible to the public. He would later follow this same model in his position of Boston Poet Laureate.

In 1985, Unicorn Press published Songs of Jubilee, a collection of new and selected poems. Many of the poems deal with topics from African-American history. This approach, digging deeper into the history of both his local community and the larger African American population, would become the focus of his next three books.

In addition to teaching, Cornish was a contributor to the ‘’Christian Science Monitor’’, reviewing numerous titles in African-American literature, mainstream American Literature, genre fiction and more from 1984-1986. At the same time, the bookstore he and Orowan owned was publishing a book review magazine titled Fiction, Literature and the Arts Review, to which he contributed. In 1984 he moderated a panel discussion at the Cambridge Public Library on Black writing, sponsored by the bookstore, which published a special issue of the magazine focusing on that topic. In addition to his wife’s store, he worked at Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston, Paperback Booksmith in Cambridge and New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, where he was still employed until a few months before his death.

During this time he also taught courses in fiction, poetry, and publishing at Boston Adult Education Center (1983-1988).

From 1982-2004, Cornish was an instructor in the department of Writing and Publishing at Emerson College. During his time at Emerson, he introduced and taught courses in the Harlem Renaissance, Jewish writers, Holocaust literature, literature of the American West, literature of World War II, gay literature and Irish writers, among others. The period between 1982 and his eventual retirement in 2004 was the height of his career—as a writer, teacher and scholar.

His book Sam’s World was published by Decatur House Ltd. in 1980. In Black Books Bulletin, Carrington Bonner wrote that the poems “are clear images to the point of the themes, with perceptive acknowledgement of the dark beautiful/ugly realities of the inner city from which he came. Simplicity and sure hand are tools that are not easily contained by a poet. Sam’s World shows off these unique qualities.” In Callalloo, E. Ethelbert Miller wrote: “I was happy to discover that Sam’s world was real, not imaginary. It is one in which people occupy a major space.” Both reviewers were impressed that Cornish was not “seeking inner exile,” as poets tend to do, but rather writing about real world experience.

At EDC, he photographed the communities to which he traveled, as well as the students and teachers with whom he worked. His employment with EDC Follow Through lasted through 1979.

In 1979, Cornish began working as Literature Director at the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities. Cornish held the position for only three years, although during that time, he advocated vigorously for small and literary presses to receive matching-grants funding.

Cornish was Poet-in-Residence at Emerson College from 1979-1980.

By 1972, his marriage to Jean Faxon had ended and, in 1976, he married his second wife, Florella Orowan, and they remained married until his death in 2018. She was a bookseller and together, they opened a small bookstore, Fiction, Literature and the Arts, in the Boston suburb of Brookline.

In 1971 Beacon Press issued his first full-length book of poems titled Generations. It was also the title of a chapbook he had self-published in 1967, although there is little similarity between the two beyond the title and one or two of the poems. The book-length Generations, unlike the chapbook, contained topics and themes that he would revisit many times in his later work. It was a very promising start and, according to Clarence Major, “The poems are clear and sharp, with no excess fat." According to various reviewers over the course of his career, Sam Cornish would become known for his “perfect pitch” and “unerring sense of cadence,”.

Working with children’s writing through Chicory and Follow Through inspired him to write books for children. His first commercially-published children’s book, Your Hand in Mine, was issued by Harcourt, Brace in 1970. It was well received and, according to Black World, “His excursion into the field of children’s stories is a gem…” This was followed in 1974 by Grandmother’s Pictures, described by the New York Daily News as “Possibly the first black Mother’s Day book ever written.” Grandmother’s Pictures, evocatively illustrated by Jeanne Johns, is not, strictly speaking, a book for children but rather an all-ages reminiscence in verse that the author described as a “disconnected mood picture.” Grandmother’s Pictures was one of his most successful books. In 1976, Bradbury Press published a hardcover version and, in 1978, Avon published a mass market edition.

Cornish is identified as one of the poets of the Black Arts Movement – a politically-motivated literary movement of the 1970s that promoted African-American identity and solidarity. When asked about his relationship to those poets, he answered:

In another interview, when asked about his identity as a writer of protest literature, he replied that if he were, he would be protesting social currents relative to the literature of the Great Depression It is instructive to realize that, during the 1970s when the Black Arts Movement flourished, he was well into his thirties and somewhat older than many of the writers in the Black Arts Movement. His views on art and life had been formed by reading writers such as Georges Simenon, John P. Marquand and MacKinley Kantor, and poets such as William Carlos Williams, e.e. cummings, Robert Penn Warren and, Langston Hughes. Despite his criticism of some Black Arts Movement writers, however, he maintained cordial relations with Dudley Randall, founder of Broadside Press, and former US Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks. As a poet, Cornish did not view himself as part of any particular movement or style. He did, however, see himself as part of an artistic tradition. When responding to an interview question by poet Afaa M. Weaver regarding his heritage, he replied:

Cornish’s work on “Chicory” led to a job as an educational consultant and curriculum specialist for the Central Atlantic Regional Education Laboratory in Washington, DC, where his job involved designing reading materials for classroom use. In 1969, he was hired as an educational advisor by the Education Development Center work with their Project Follow Through in Newton, MA:

In 1968 he married Jean Faxon, a graduate student in social work at the University of Maryland. He was working for Baltimore’s Community Action Agency. She was from Lenox, Massachusetts, so they decided to move to Boston, where he found employment in two local bookstores. On one visit back to Baltimore, he had a disagreement with personnel at the Lombard Junior High School and believed he was “banned from Baltimore.” An article in the Evening Sun, “Come Home, Sam,” sought to clear up the mistake. The article describes him as a “teacher at the Highland Park Free School” in Roxbury, MA, although he was hired specifically as a curriculum specialist because of his work on Chicory and similar community-based involvements.

At that time, there was increased interest in promoting the writings of inner-city youth and adults. In 1966, his efforts resulted in his first major publication, Chicory, an anthology of writings by children and adults that was published by the Association Press, a subsidiary of the YMCA. The Enoch Pratt Library currently features an article on the history of the magazine:

By 1964, Cornish had become active in the small press scene and his poems were appearing in various literary magazines. Through these publications, he was making contacts—not only among poets but in the community of neighborhood activists and social workers. He formed associations with the Baltimore Multi-Service Center, a community-based organization, and with the Enoch Pratt Free Library, promoting not only his writing but the writing of others in the community, including writing by children.

In 1962 Cornish published a chapbook titled People Beneath the Window. According to Carrington Bonner, writing for Black Books Bulletin, “…there’s an old man at New Era Bookstore in downtown Baltimore who will tell you he has sold over 1,000 copies…” He was interviewed by the Baltimore Sun about this period:

By the late 1960s, he was settled in Massachusetts and connecting with the local poetry community. A flyer produced by the Harvard Advocate announcing a weekly poetry reading in Harvard Square on April 18 (1968) has an index card stapled to it: "Sam Cornish will be reading..." The flyer mentions Mimeo and his chapbook People Beneath the Window and that he worked in a local bookstore. Another small announcement in the Boston Globe states that he was reading with poet Ruth Whitman at the Arlington Street Church. In 1967 a chapbook entitled Winters was published by the Sans Souci Press and a broadside, The River, was printed by the Temple Bar Bookshop in 1969.

In 1958 Cornish was drafted into the army. After boot camp, he spent two years at Ft. Benning, Georgia, which he later regarded as a mainly positive experience because, he said, for the first time, he was able to have enough to eat and access to health care. Owing to fallen arches and extreme presbyopia, he was not a good candidate for military maneuvers so spent the remainder of his induction on K.P., peeling potatoes and as an army medic. He later claimed that doing this undemanding work left him ample time to continue his reading.

Samuel James Cornish (December 22, 1935 - August 20, 2018) was Boston’s first poet laureate. He was associated with the Black Arts Movement. He taught at Emerson College.

Cheuse is appreciative of the historic details in this “..odd amalgam of ego and history, prose and poetry, hymns to Harlem and the deep South and the music of Ruth Brown and the courage of Martin Luther King and all kinds of shades of skin from black to brown to sepia to pink and back again. All of this contrives to give the feeling of the era. This innocent through dangerous world lurching toward World War II, and the sensuous tone of being black in Baltimore in 1935.”