Mini Story: Dan Schneider (Cosmoetica)

At one time, if you were to look up James A. Emanuel using a search engine, Daniel Schneider’s Cosmoetica, a website featuring literary criticism and interviews, may have been listed in your top search results. Schneider’s first mention of Emanuel dates back to March 6, 2001, and in that blog post, he writes with authority about Emanuel’s style but with some speculation about Emanuel’s life.

In fact, back in 2001, Schneider, also a poet and writer, could find only one online source mentioning Emanuel; the website featured Emanuel’s poem “The Negro.” But it was nearly a decade prior around 1993 that Schneider came across Emanuel’s poetry while in a used bookstore in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. He felt that he had stumbled upon “the most neglected poet in American poetry” (“The Not So Strange Emanuel Case”). That first blog post on Emanuel is written in part as a call to action to read Emanuel’s work and a defense of Emanuel’s literary merit exemplified by a close reading of Emanuel’s poems “The Negro,” “For a Farmer,” “Sonnet for a Writer,” and “To Kill a Morning Spider.”

Less than two years later, Emanuel’s translator, Jean Migrenne, shared Schneider’s blog post with Emanuel, and Emanuel received this news with much appreciation. In Emanuel’s Christmas Notes of 2002, Schneider is referenced twice. The first reference is to the blog entry, which is labeled as “MY FIRST INTERNET reference.” The second reference is in the category "POEMS ON INTERNET" and mentions Schneider’s reprint and analysis of the poem “For the 4th Grade: Prospect School: How I Became a Poet.” After Emanuel and Schneider made contact, more engagements between the two were to follow. Schneider published an interview with Emanuel, Migrenne and Godelieve Simons, Emanuel’s artistic collaborator; he published a written interview with Emanuel; he uploaded his own recitations of Emanuel’s poetry; and he made available on YouTube the full Middle Passage album. Through their engagements and before this project, Schneider’s online presentation of Emanuel’s life and work was the most comprehensive.

Emanuel and Schneider sought to increase access and circulation of Emanuel’s works. They both felt that his work was not receiving the attention it deserved. In fact, Emanuel writes in his autobiography The Force and the Reckoning (2001) that it bothered him that he was not included in the first Norton Anthology of African American Literature that was published in 1996. It was shortly after his initial engagement with Schneider that Emanuel wrote a letter to Sonia Sanchez, who did not respond because she was no longer at Temple University, asking, as if he was a student in her class, “could you tell us whether you think there is an African American blacklist functioning?” The timing of Emanuel’s letter to Sanchez suggests that his conversations with Schneider may have fanned his inquiry.

Schneider’s promotion of Emanuel’s poetry online for over twenty years demonstrates the value he places on Emanuel's work and his dedication to providing access to it. Schneider’s efforts also provide insights about how Emanuel's career based in France (distant from his primarily English reading audiences) may have been impacted by the digital divide. Though Emanuel left the U.S. for France during a time when physical proximity offered far greater visibility than the developing digital realm (1984), overtime his limited circulation in the digital spaces may have impacted his exposure to new audiences. Having a website like Cosmoetica was important to creating consistent digital connection to his work.

While Emanuel and Schneider never bridged their physical distance to meet in person, and their phone conversations perhaps only totaled seven hours, their friendship lasted until Emanuel’s death in 2013. Despite their distance and the technical challenges, the men were important to each other. At his home in Paris, Emanuel took a photo of a part of his bookshelf. On it were three photographs of people significant to him: (1) Madame Plassard, the mother of Marie-France Plassard, who for years welcomed Emanuel to live and write at her home in Condom, France; (2) Daniel Schneider and his wife Jessica, and (3) Emanuel’s beloved niece Cheri Emmons and great-nephew Raymond Smith.