Abstract
This essay is a study of Credences at the Altar of Cloud, Anthony McNeill’s (1979) second collection of poems. It explores the ethos behind McNeill’s sound poetics, and the ways in which musical soundcapes of the 1970s influence the formal workings of these poems. On a broader level, the essay suggests a framework for thinking about the relationship between music, spirituality, and the poetic process in the Afro-diasporic context. The essay situates McNeill’s work within the context of radical experiments in art for the purposes of resistance and decolonialization in the Jamaican 1970s. It surveys the poet’s engagement with a range of musical forms in the 1970s, showing that McNeill saw himself as bringing to poetry what musicians like Coltrane, Davis, Tyner, and Stevie Wonder brought to music, a sort of spiritual quest that sought to break through barriers of the visible world. This view of spirituality, a non-theistic sacrality, is one that McNeill sees poetry as offering on its own terms, by harnessing traditional Afro-Caribbean conceptions of ritual and art. Thus, in Credences, a work that evidences a self-conscious, ongoing reflection on the formal workings of poetry, poetry is presented as the quintessential mimetic activity: its ability to mime nature, fostering a sense of co-naturalness with the world, comes from its ability to embody its energies through rhythm, music and sound. Through close readings, I therefore reflect on how McNeill’s poetry, and the period of black thought and creativity that it spotlights, lead us to think through sound as embodied knowledge.