Durem, Ray [Ramón]

Ray [Ramón] Durem

Born to mixed-race parents in Seattle, Washington, Ramón Durem (1915-1963) came to poetry relatively late in life while living in Mexico, his escape from the front lines of the Cold War.  Before his witty and strident verse, written under the Anglicized name of Ray, attracted the attention of Langston Hughes, Durem had joined the Communist Party, volunteered for the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War, and worked as a union organizer in Los Angeles.  In poems such as “I Know I’m Not Sufficiently Obscure” (1962)—“I know I’m not sufficiently obscure
/ to please the critics—nor devious enough.
/ Imagery escapes me.
/ I cannot find those mild and gracious words
/ to clothe the carnage”—Durem pled for the reunion of modern poetry and honest protest.  His case impressed the Black Arts movement, which discovered him as a sympathetic elder and canonized him in Dudley Randall’s anthology The Black Poets (1971).  One of Randall’s selections from Durem, “Award (A Gold Watch to the FBI Man Who has Followed Me for 25 Years)” (1964), dryly acknowledged the poet’s many days of intimate FBI surveillance, also captured in a 312-page file maintained between 1940 and 1967.

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