Jacket Notes by Ishmael Reed

Jacket Notes

Being a colored poet
Is like going over
Niagara Falls in a
Barrel

An 8 year old can do what
You do unaided
The barrel maker doesn't
The you can cut it

The gawkers on the bridge
Hope you fall on your
Face

The tourist bus full of
Paying customers broke-down
Just out of Buffalo

Some would rather dig
The postcards than
Catch your act

Amile from the drink
It begins to storm

But what really hurts is
You're bigger than the
Barrel

Poet, essayist, and novelist Ishmael Reed was born in 1938 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was raised in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of New York at Buffalo.

He is the author of several collections of poetry, including: New and Collected Poems 1964-2007 (Da Capo Press, 2007); New and Collected Poems(Atheneum, 1988); A Secretary to the Spirits (1978); Catechism of D Neoamerican HooDoo Church (1970);Chattanooga (1973); and Conjure(1972).

Reed has also written numerous novels, including: Japanese by Spring(1993); The Terrible Twos (1982); Flight to Canada (1976); The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974); Yellow Back Radio Broke Down(1969); and The Free-Lance Pallbearers.

Among his plays are Mother Hubbard (1982) and The Ace Boons(1980). He is also the author of collections of essays: Airing Dirty Laundry (1993); Writin' is Fightin': Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper (1988); God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays(1982), and Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (1978).

Reed was a cofounder of Yardbird Publishing Co. in 1971 and also founded Reed, Cannon, and Johnson Communications in 1973. With Al Young, he co founded Quilt magazine. Reed has also edited a number of anthologies.

Among his honors and awards are the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Award, the Lewis Michaux Award, an American Civil Liberties award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Arts Council. Reed has lectured at numerous colleges and universities. He served as a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley for thirty-five years. Ishmael Reed lives in Oakland, California.

sources:  

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/reed/reed_ishmael_poetry.html

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/750

Is It Because I'm Black?

In honor of Black History Month....

Is It Because I'm Black?
by Joseph Cotter

Why do men smile when I speak, 

And call my speech 

The whimperings of a babe 

That cries but knows not what it wants? 

Is it because I am black? 

Why do men sneer when I arise 

And stand in their councils, 

And look them eye to eye, 

And speak their tongue?
Is it because I am black?

Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr. (February 2, 1861 – March 14, 1949) was a poet, writer, playwright, and community leader raised in Louisville, Kentucky (but born in Nelson County, Kentucky)] Cotter was one of the earliest African-American playwrights to be published. He was known as “Kentucky’s first Negro poet with real creative ability.” Born at the start of the American Civil War, raised in poverty with no formal education until the age of 22, and living through a time of monumental change, Cotter also became an educator and an advocate of black education.