Named a  New York Times  Book Review Notable Book of 2006 One of the founding fathers of multi-cultural studies, award-winning writer Ishmael Reed first came to the attention of the literary world as a poet, and despite success as a novelist, playwright, essayist, and recording artist, has never ceased to be a poet. He delves into spiritual and political waters with his own unexpected and uniquely powerful voice. New and Collected Poems, 1966-2006 captures four decades of Reed's inimitable verse, a visionary journey from Chattanooga to New York, from Africa to Oakland. In language that is pointed, innovative, and profound, Reed weaves politics and war with Yoruba and Jazz, and takes on American culture, from prejudice to Pepsi to George W. Bush. In this important and long-awaited volume -- the first poetry collection from the MacArthur fellow in nearly twenty years -- one of America's most esteemed and intrepid poets, whose "Beware Do Not Read This Poem" has been cited by Gale Research as one of about 20 poems most frequently studied in literature courses, shows why Reed has helped define our cultural forefront from the '60s to today. "Reed's best poems conjure up a vertiginous, multiplicious, irresolvable and thrilling world." -- New York Times Book Review , 10/21/07 Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist who has published nine critically acclaimed novels and more than a dozen other books of poetry and essays. In additional to being nominated for a National Book Award for Poetry, recent awards have included the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award, a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and 2008 Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. He is Professor Emeritus at University of California at Berkeley. New and Collected Poems 1964-2006 By Ishmael Reed Thunder's Mouth Press Copyright © 2007 Ishmael Reed All right reserved. ISBN: 9781568583419 Chapter One The Ghost in Birmingham The only Holy Ghost in Birmingham is Denmark Vesey'sHoly Ghost, brooding, moving in and out of things. No onenotices the figure in antique cloak of the last century,haunting the pool games, talking of the weather with apasserby, attending mass meetings, standing guard, comingup behind each wave of protest, reloading a pistol. No onenotices the antique figure in shabby clothing, moving inand out of things-rallies of moonshine gatherings-whousurps a pulpit and preaches a fire sermon, plucking theplumage of a furious hawk, a sparrow having passivelydied, moving in and out of chicken markets, watchingsparrow habits become hawk habits, through bar stoolsand greenless parks, beauty salons, floating games, goingsomewhere, haranguing the crowds, his sleeves rolled uplike a steelworker's, hurling epithets at the pharoah's club-wieldingbrigade, under orders to hunt down the firstbornof each low lit hearth.There are no bulls in America in the sense of great symbols,which preside over resuscitation of godheads, that shakethe dead land green. Only the "bull" of Birmingham, papiermache, ten dollars down monthly terms, carbon copymock heroic American variety of bullhood, who told acrowded room of flashbulbs that there was an outsidermoving in and out of things that night, a spectre whoflashed through the night like Pentecost. He's right, there was. Not the spook of the Judaic mystery, the universalimmersed in the particular. Not the outsider from unpopularmysteries, a monstrous dialectic waddling through thecorridors of his brain, but the nebulous presence hidden byflashbulbing events in Birmingham, Metempsychosisstroking the air.Pragma the bitch has a knight errant called Abbadon, in theold texts the advocate of dreadful policies. The whore, herabominations spilling over, her stinking afterbirths slimingtheir way towards a bay of pigs, has a bland and well-groomedknight errant who said that "if we hand down afew more decisions, pile up paper, snap a few more picturesby Bachrach of famous people before grand rhetoricalcolumns of the doric order, perhaps they will stop comingout into the streets in Raleigh, Greensboro, Jackson andAtlanta sometimes called the Athens of the south).Pragma's well-groomed and bland procurer is on long distance manufacturing heroes,Heroes who bray in sirens screaming in from Idlewild, winging in from points south,Their utterances cast into bronze by press-card-carrying harpies, those creatures of distorted reality.O ebony-limbed Osiris, what clown folk singer or acrobat shall I place the tin wreath upon?When will Osiris be scattered over 100 ghettos?Heroes are ferried in by motorcycle escorts, their faces cast into by Pointillism, by Artzybasheff,Sculptor of Henry Luce's America.Introducing the King of Birmingham, sometimes called the anointed one,Who receives the tin wreath across Americana banquet rooms,His hands dripping with blood like a fanatical monk as rebellion squirms on the stake.Introducing the Black Caligula, who perf