;)
]]>I guess the meaning is not what it's about, but mixing cultural influences and colors that create a consortium--using a tone that's fluid and imagery that makes up for the coded messages most of which flew right over me.
Msotly...it sounds really prettym like this:
"I write the motown long plays for the comeback ofOsiris. Make them up when stars stare at sleepingsteer out here near the campfire."
]]>Hey - apparently, "conversate" shows up in Google News 5 times - and YOU account for two of those!!
AllHipHop.com accounts for another two.
Apparently - if 'conversate' DOES every get accepted as a word (and I'll resist to my dying day, most likely), you will be personally responsible!
]]>"I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash,
the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and
Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do
the dirty boogie with scorpions. I make the bulls
keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste."
Frakking sweet.
]]>People really have to understand Ishmael wrote this poem long before Black folks established a definitive connection with Nile Valley civilizations. Today this connection is firmly establish, and it’s not difficult to find folks who can run down a relationship to almost all of the lines in this poem. But when he penned this he was out there by himself. He was leading our community into an unfamiliar history and connection with our past.
Another one of my favorites by Ishmael is My Friends. I don't have it available right now but the beauty of him expressing the uselessness of friends who ...drink up all you liquor and eat your food while you are out…. And his final loving question, who needs them, continues to resonate years and years after reading this poem. His poetry is genius, but i would suggest anyone who enjoyed this poem check out his novels which he is much more know for, especially The Last Days of Louisiana Reds, Mumbo Jumbo and The Terrible Twos.
Please don't hijack. I say that with great respect. If you want me to discuss something, I'd ask that you send an e-mail.
]]>When you say "this connection is firmly established" there's a missing phrase there that begs the question...firmly established by WHOM? (is that right? "whom" I mean...)
Reed writes this poem some time after STOLEN LEGACY comes out. Long after Alpha Phi Alpha adopts Egyptian iconography to describe their pledge process. Reed WAS on some Afrofuturistic shit here, but what he's doing isn't so much creating a "definitive" connection, but digging INTO that definitive connection. Fusing both the classically African and the classically American.
]]>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/faith-not-race-the-big-fa_b_156780.html
]]>Case in point: Mumbo Jumbo
]]>But why would that matter here? Reed himself isn't taught in universities (black or non-black) until when?
As for my reference to Afrofuturistic shit. I say that in GREAT respect. Bringing together the cowboy and Anpt? He's mining the past to create the future. That is what Afrofuturism is at its best.
]]>Gushing praise aside, what's the history of the emergence of Egyptian mythology in black American society? I'm a big fan of Sun Ra's music, and this poem naturally made me think of him. I don't know all that much about Sun Ra the man, but I assume he latched on to the Egyptian mythology thing rather than being its progenitor.
]]>This was the last poem in my Norton Anthology and one day, I idly read it. Loved it then and thirty years later, still love it.
As a young white guy, the sheer word magic just drove me wild: jazz, sex, cowboys and Egyptians! vampire outlaw of the milky way was simply a thrilling line.
As an old white guy who appreciates Reed's iconoclasm, I now hear the doubled play on the sexed black man, the personal behind the persona. The mix of self assertion and subversion remains delicious as ever. The use of cowboys is especially interesting for the way Reed takes the cultural image and re-mythologizes it, using it to step outside of the cultural box where blacks were supposed to belong.
Also interesting is how the poem is so different from the Movement poets of the period. Reed dresses his anger in pop inventiveness; the political lurks there in the incantation at the end, but the poem formally walks away from it; incredible sexual politics.
]]>Reminds me a LOT of the great beat poet (and one of my favs in any genre) Bob Kaufman...
]]>