Ishmael Reed reading from his own works, at the University of Iowa, October 9, 1974

Announcer: The following was recorded October 9th, 1974, as part of the Black Kaleidoscope for Cultural Series at the University of Iowa. Reading from his own works is Ishmael Reed, author and freelance poet. Introducing Mr. Reed is Darwin Turner, Chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Iowa. Darwin Turner: It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Second Black Kaleidoscope Program of 1974/'75, a program presented primarily by the Afro-American Studies Program of University of Iowa. This evening, it's my pleasure to introduce a writer, a director, an editor, an intellectual. Perhaps the best way to begin an introduction of Ishmael Reed is to say that here is a young man who was nominated for two 1973 National Book Awards, one in poetry for Conjure, one in prose fiction for Mumbo Jumbo. He was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee and reared in Buffalo, New York. Darwin Turner: That kind of pattern of opposites is characteristic of Ishmael Reed. He even deserves two introductions that I'll try to give briefly. One, the academic professional introduction. He's the author of four novels, the Freelance Pallbearers, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Mumbo Jumbo, and the Last Days of Louisiana Red. The author of two volumes of poetry, Conjure, Chattanooga. The editor of an anthology of contemporary Black poetry called 19 Necromancers from Now. He's an editorial director for Yardbird Publishing Company Incorporated, and competing with himself is also sponsoring a publishing company, the Reed, Cannon & Johnson Communications. He's presently teaching writing at the University of California at Berkeley. Darwin Turner: But that's the formal, professional, academic Ishmael Reed. Let me briefly introduce you to the other one. Who or what is the poet Ishmael? Would you believe an intellectual anti-intellectual? A religious opponent of religion. A dueling pacifist. A Black antagonist champion of Blacks. A poet influenced by Yates, Pound, Blake and the Umbra poets. The Umbra poets are Black, for those of you who have been trained at the University of Iowa. A Black arts poet who attacks Black arts critics and poets. A satirical creator of myths. An ideologist who derives ideologies. A poet who ranges in allusion from Nixon to Wotan to Osiris. A poet of the topical and the ancient. A difficult to analyze poet who is not even mentioned in Stephen Henderson's analysis of the Blackness of Black poetry in Understanding the New Black Poetry, but whose poetry offers a point by point illustration of Henderson's analysis. Darwin Turner: Stir these seeming contradictions together in a vat of satire, whirl yourselves wildly until dizzy, then pour slowly. The product is the poetry fiction of Ishmael Reed. To be sipped as delicately as one might sip a potion of two parts bourbon, one part vodka, and a dash of coke. There's no guarantee that every drinker will like the concoction, some will even say that at times it's not poetry, occasionally the sip may be flat. Most often however, it is quickly intoxicating. Here to read from his poetry and fiction is Ishmael Reed. Ishmael Reed: Well, it's going to be very difficult to push that introduction. Always have a friend give you an introduction. I thought I'd read from Conjure, Chattanooga, Mumbo Jumbo, and a new novel I'm working on called Flight to Canada. Ishmael Reed: There is a whale in my thigh. At night, he swims the seven seas. On cold days, I can feel him sleeping. I went to the doctor to see about myself. "Do you feel this?" The doctor asked, a harpoon in my flesh. I nodded yes in a clinic room of frozen poetry. Then there is no whale in your thigh. There is a whale in my mind. I feed him arrogant prophets. Ishmael Reed: The second poem is called, I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra, and since this has confused so many people, improve my reputation for obscurity and eccentricity, I thought I might add a few liner notes here while I'm reading it. As you know, my generation, my mother and my grandmother and probably her mother, my great-grandmother, and after that it was probably Pagan, before that it was probably Pagan, so we don't know about that, they would say, "I am a soldier in the army of the Lord." My takeoff on that, my paraphrase is, I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra. If you know Egyptian mythology, you will know that there's a writer in the God's boat, Ra's boat, and he's Thoth, T-H-O-T-H, and he's usually depicted as a writer. Ishmael Reed: Don't let anybody tell you that African writing is oral, some of the earliest writing known to man is Egyptian writing. They wrote books, a lot of which haven't been translated. He's usually shown writing on a tablet. So in this poem, the writer's a hero, speaks in several voices, narratives, speaks in several voices. The author, the Thoth figure, and the Osiris figure. It goes back and forth between ancient and contemporary allusions. I begin it with a quote, this was written a long time before the Exorcist. A quote says, "The devil must be forced to reveal any such physical evil, potions, charms, fetishes still outside the body and these must be burned." This is from the Rituale Romanum published in 1947, it was endorsed by the coat-of-arms and introductory letter from Francis Cardinal Spellman, who was also the speaker of the armed forces incidentally. Ishmael Reed: When I read this quote, I felt that it probably was aimed at African material when they talk about fetishes and charms being burned. There's a hint there of an ancient clash between two alternative cultures. Since the Egyptians were herd gatherers, I took the liberty to mix up the allusions with old West imagery, because I guess cattlemen all over the world have things in common. LBJ, he was a cattleman, he used to like to visit Australia, to cattlemen in Australia and they would have barbecues together. So the association's not as far fetched as it may sound. Ishmael Reed: I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, sidewinders in the saloons of fools bit my forehead, like O. The untrustworthiness of Egyptologists who do not know their trips. "Who is that dog-faced man?" They asked, the day I rode from town. Schoolmarms with halitosis can not see the Nefertiti fake chipped on the run by slick Germans. I'm proposing here that Nefertiti, the sculpture that we know through the popular art history books is a fake done by German archeologists when they were out there collecting material in Egypt. It's in a Berlin museum, and a lot of people will tell you that Egypt's probably in the suburbs of Berlin, but it wasn't, it was in Africa. Ishmael Reed: Chipped on the run by slick Germans, the hawk behind Sonny Rollins' head or the ritual beard of his ax, a longhorn winding its bells through the Field of Reeds. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, I bedded down with Isis, Lady of the Boogaloo. If you look at, even in Europe, you'll find remnants of a Black Madonna, even in churches in Europe. I'm arguing here, and if you don't believe me, you can go to people like Carl Jung and a lot of other scholars who propose that the Virgin Mary is merely a successor to the Black Isis of Egypt. Okay? Ishmael Reed: Lady of the Boogaloo, dove down deep in her horny. Stuck up her Wells Fargo in a daring midday getaway. "Start grabbing the blue," I said from atop my double crown. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, Ezzard Charles of the Chisholm Trail. Ezzard Charles was the Heavyweight Champion of the World, he's a very skillful boxer, great technician, but he wasn't good enough. He's always seemed to meet his doom at the hands of sluggers, and of people who knew the roundhouse, how do to a roundhouse. Ezzard Charles of the Chisholm Trail, and this is Osiris too. Osiris was good, but he was cast out of the temple by the conspirators, Seth, his brother and his opponent. So there again, he was not good enough in the pantheon, so he met his doom. Ishmael Reed: Ezzard Charles of the Chisholm Trail. Took up the bass, but they blew off my thumb. Alchemist in ringmanship, but a sucker for the right cross. There's a pun, that could be the Christian cross or a gesture in boxing. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, vamoosed from the temple, I bide my time. The price on the wanted posters was a-going down. Outlaw aliases cop my stance and moody greenhorns were making me dance, while my mouth's shooting iron got its chamber jammed. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra, boning up in the old West. Boning up is an old classical old West image, but it also is a resurrection thing. When Osiris is torn to pieces, the writers again intervene to the behest of Ra and puts him back together again. Ishmael Reed: You should see me pick off these tin cans, whippersnappers, I write the Motown long plays for the comeback of Osiris. Make them up when stars stare at sleeping steer out here, near the campfire. Women arrive on the backs of goats and throw themselves on my Bowie. About the 4th century, Osiris is cast out, he becomes Pluto, Lord of the Underworld. You hear a lot of people in this country talk about judgment, the original judgment had an Egyptian cast, because Osiris is the judge of the dead. In the Christian West, he becomes the devil. I was talking to Darwin about this, having a commonplace conversation before we came here, and I was suggesting that the devil is merely a symbol for all the alternative gods. The Catholic church might have invented the devil so to save paperwork. So we just call all these Pagans the devil. Ishmael Reed: As you're reading of the Black Mass ceremonies which are very popular in Europe, that in the Black Mass, the devil is a goat figure and the women arrive to the ceremonies on the backs of goats. I'm a cowboy in the boat of Ra, lord of the lash, the Loup-Garou Kid. Halfbreed son of Pieces and Aquarius. I hold the souls of men in my pot. I do the dirty boogie with scorpions. In other words, the hero's not afraid of scorpions. According to what I've read, the Egyptians were universally afraid of scorpions. I make the bulls keep still and was the first swinger to grape the taste. I am a cowboy in his boat. Pope Joan of the Ptah Ra. Okay, there is speculation that the tarot cards are the mysteries that were taken out of Egypt. We call Egyptians Gypsies, which could be etymologically related to Egyptian. Ishmael Reed: There is also speculation that tarot is really a combination of two gods, the earth god Ptah and Ra, the sun god. Pope Joan is a figure that pops up in my stuff a lot, because Pope Joan in the tarot is like the muse figure. In Europe poetry, you get a muse. If the card is turned right side up, she is a muse, an inspiration to the poets. But if she's turned upside down, she's a vampire and destructive, like Erzulie in Voodoo. Ishmael Reed: Pope Joan of the Ptah Ra, come here a minute, will you, doll? Be a good girl and bring me my buffalo horn of Black powder. Bring me my headdress of Black feathers. Bring my bones of Ju-Ju snake. Go get my eyelids of red paint. Hand me my shadow. I am going into town after Set. I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Look out, Set. To get Set, to unseat Set. Here I come, Set. To sunset Set, to set down Set. That's not just a series of useless dazzling puns, but the punishment that Set, the conspirator who was the opponent, Set is the destroyer of growing things, the sun. Osiris was a good guy of fertility who was a vegetation figure. So when I say this, the punishment that Set received for his diabolical deed was that he was sat upon. Ishmael Reed: You find there are a lot of remnants of Egyptian culture, even in contemporary Africa, and in other cultures you'd find that the punishment of the villain was to be sat upon. His same was also Set. Usurper of the royal couch, imposter RAdio of Moses' bush. I am claiming here that the mystery voice that Moses heard was Set, because Set does the same things in mythology that Jehovah does. He causes famine, pestilence, storms, like an Old Testament figure. What I'm saying is that Set was taken out of Egypt and became Jehovah, because we don't know the original name of the god that Abraham prayed to. As a matter of fact, it's ineffable, you don't even talk about it. But I have a theory about it. Ishmael Reed: When I say RAdio, this was written a long time before Chariots of the Gods, and it's also a play on Ra. But in the [inaudible], it speculates that Moses was listening to a primitive radio brought from outer space. Party pooper, O hater of dance, vampire outlaw of the Milky Way. Whenever you write a poem, you have to explain it. Ishmael Reed: This is a takeoff on an old legend that came out of New Orleans, probably not a legend but historical event concerning two figures, Betty and Dupree. I don't know why all the homicide songs come out of New Orleans. Well, I live in the West Coast, I can understand why. But anyways, it's a takeoff on the classic Betty Dupree. I do take 10 liberties with it, and it's a song performed with a trio, like [inaudible] performs, because it's supposed with music. So I use the old blues bar, blues stanza form, and I'll read the poem. Ishmael Reed: Betty took the ring from her fabled jellyroll. You know jellyroll has sexual connotations in blues, right? It's not just something you get at the bakery. Betty took the ring from her fabled jellyroll, she gave it all to Dupree and eased it on his soul. She climbed his ancient redwood and sang out from his peak. She climbed his ancient redwood and sang out from his peak. She thrilled his natural forest and made his demon creak. She shook the constellations and dazzled them across his eyes. She shook the constellations and dazzled them across his eyes. She showered his head with quasars and made is Taurus cry. China, China, China, come blow my China horn. China, China, China, come blow my China horn. Telegraph my indigo sky ship and make his voyage long. Ishmael Reed: Betty touched his organ, made his cathedral rock. Betty touched his organ, made his cathedral rock. His worshipers moaned and shouted, his stained glass windows cracked. One night, she dressed in scarlet and threw her man a ball. One night, she dressed in scarlet and threw her man a ball. The butlers came as armies, the guests walked through the walls. Dupree, he shot the jeweler, she had him under a spell. Dupree, he shot the jeweler, she had him under a spell. The calmest man in Sing Sing is happy in his cell. Ishmael Reed: My Thing About Cats. I don't like cats. They're spooky. In Berkeley, whenever a Black cat saw a dancer and me, they crossed over to the other side. Alan and Carol's cat jumped across over my feet. Someone else's cat pressed its paw against my leg. In Seattle, it's green eyes all the way. "They cry all the time whenever you go out, but when you return, they stop." Dancer said of the three cats in a backyard on Saint Mark's Place. There is a woman downstairs who makes their sounds when she feeds them, we don't get along. Ishmael Reed: Man or Butterfly. It is like [Loucy's] dream, my strange affair with cities. Sometimes I can't tell whether I am a writer writing about cities, or a city is writing about me. A city in peril, everything that makes me tick is on the bum. All of my goods and services are wearing down. Nothing resides in me anymore. I am becoming a ghost town with not even an occasional riot to perk me up. They are setting up a commission to find out what is wrong with me. I am the lead-off witness. Ishmael Reed: This poem is based upon Hoodoo, I try to do abstract interpretations of structures I see in the vast resources we have here, that a lot of people think are nutty are crazy or way out. But I think Johnny Carson's way out. But anyway, there was an African legend, or probably historical figure, a figure named Long Ju-Ju. He was selecting people to go into slavery, he would sit at the mouth of the cave like an oracle figure. Tell them, "Stand over there. You can go, you pass." He would literally eat people up, and so this is a poem that eats up the reader. It's a cannibal, and it's called, Beware: Do Not Read This Poem, which guarantees that the reader will read it. Ishmael Reed: Tonight, thriller was about an old woman so vain, she surrounded herself with many mirrors. It got so bad that finally she locked herself indoors and her whole life became the mirrors. One day, the villager broke into her house, but she was too swift for them. She disappeared into a mirror. Each tenant who bought the house after that lost a loved one to the old woman in the mirror. First a little girl, then a young woman, then the young woman's husband. The hunger of this poem is legendary. It has taken in many victims. Back off from this poem, it has drawn in your feet. Back off from this poem, it has drawn in your legs. Back off from this poem, it is a greedy mirror. Ishmael Reed: You are into this poem from the waist down. Nobody can hear you, can they? This poem has had you up to here. Belch. This poem ain't got no manners. You can't call out from this poem. Relax now, go with this poem. Move and roll onto this poem. Do not resist this poem. This poem has your eyes, this poem has his hair, this poem has his arms, this poem has his fingers, this poem has his fingertips. This poem is the reader and the reader, this poem. Statistic, the United States Bureau of Missing Persons reports that in 1968, over 100,000 people disappeared, leaving no sonic clues nor trace, only a space in the lives of their friends. Ishmael Reed: This is a poem I wrote while I was teaching Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which was a very rewarding experience. I was trying to sum it up in one epigram. It's called, Dualism in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I am outside of history. I wish I had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in its cage. I am inside history, it's hungrier than I thought. The piping down of God. "God is above grammar," a monk once said. "I want to sit on the window," God told a ticket clerk. "You mean next to the window," the clerk corrected. "No, on the window," God insisted. "The clouds have a right to cheer their boss." The clerk apologized and God piped down. Ishmael Reed: This is a reply to a critic called Dragon's Blood, which is also an incense in Hoodoo. You can go in a store and buy it, you can buy these things all over the country. Dragon's blood, smells good. Just because you can't see the stones, don't mean I'm not building. You ain't no mason, how the fuck would you know? The difference between my heart and your intellect, my undisciplined way of doing things, I failed the written driver's test for example, and your science, is the difference between the earth and the snow. The earth wears its colors well, builds them, loves them, and sticks with them. The snow needs no one. It lies there all cold like, it breezes behind wolf tracks and wingless dead birds. It is a hardship on the poor. Thinking is its downfall. I say thinking is its downfall, you look at snowflakes under a microscope, look like they're structured. They're thought out, thinking is its downfall. Ishmael Reed: Dress Rehearsal Paranoia #2. In San Francisco, they are taking up a collection. If the earthquake won't come, they'll send for it. I think I'll read a few from Chattanooga. Being a colored poet is like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. An eight year old can do what you do unaided. The barrel maker doesn't think 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. A mile from the brink, it begins to storm, but what really hurts is you're bigger than the barrel. Ishmael Reed: Okay, this is one mixing up the Kardec Method. In Brazil, there is a way of healing called Kardec, which is a practice there. Kardec was a Portuguese spiritualist who became pretty popular in Brazil, as a matter of fact, his face is on a stamp. What they do is they heal people through aural, A-U-R-A-L, healing. They believe that there's a feel surrounding each person with colors in it, and according to the colors you can see, and certain trained people can see this, according to the colors you can see whether the person's well or ill. There's a whole procedure they go through in this Kardec Method. As a matter of fact, I understand they have some new cameras that really show auras. They do? Right, okay. Ishmael Reed: Petro is, P-E-T-R-O, is not what you put in your gasoline, I mean it's not what you put in your car. But simply explained, Petro is like practicing Voodoo with the left hand. There are certain kind of Petro spirits that go with it, and what they'll do is they'll take you out. If you want to get rid of somebody, you call in a Petro loa. If you want to heal somebody, you call in a Rada loa. I'm in a Rada, I guess, but sometimes I'm tempted. So this again is mixing up language from Brazilian spiritism and old West imagery. This is also like a showdown, like the classical showdown between the old gunfighter and the young punk, which is like a writing metaphor you get a lot of. Old gunfighter, okay. Ishmael Reed: No, son, I don't want to draw. I hung up my Petro in the spring of '68. Had got done with picking notches and what with the winging and all, I ask you, was it worth it? So un-cock your rod, friend. Have a sit down. While I stand back about 15 feet, thinking about some positive things. The gals at the Roads of Ruin Cabaret at the end of the trail, the ranch in Arizona you have your heart set on. Don't fret the blue rays emanating from my fingers, they ain't going to cut you. Aha, just as I thought, your outside aura looks a little gray. Your particles cry the dull murmur of dying. I detect a little green and red inside your protecting sheet. You are here, but your ghost running across the desert on a Greyhound. It bought a ticket to no place in particular. Swoosh, yonder went the combined hand pass. Feel better? Ishmael Reed: This is called Skirt Dance. Skirt Dance. I am to my honey what marijuana is to Tijuana. The Acapulco Gold of her secret harvest. Up her lush coasts I glide at midnight bringing a full boat. That's all the Spanish I know. This is called, and it's got one of these titles that you find in the old books, early print books about religion, that kind of title. If I had the right typeface, the Garamond typeface, I'd put it in that, but you can't get everything. Got a Coca-Cola typeface though, you can get that. Sara was banged and slammed and thrown and jostled, shook and shifted and ripped and rumpled. The next day, she was back on the freeway. Tennessee women, thoroughbreds. Ishmael Reed: This is, I was at the Library of Congress and you're supposed to leave a poem for posterity, and I left this one, because it was appropriate. It was about a president of the United States named Franklin Pierce who I understand was a matinee idol, but his wife didn't get out very much. She was a recluse. It's called Mystery First Lady. Franklin Pierce's wife never came downstairs, she never came upstairs either. This is a primitive one, as a matter of fact crocodiles is misspelled, which doesn't mean I don't know how to spell crocodiles, who doesn't know how to spell crocodiles? But I wasn't thinking at the time, so it's misspelled. Crocodiles, it's really primitive. A crocodile don't hunt his victims, they hunt him. All he do is open his jaws. Ishmael Reed: A loup-garou is a figure both in Voodoo and Hoodoo. You can read about loup-garous in Haitian works, you can read about loup-garou in Gumbo Ya-Ya, which is a book that comes out of New Orleans. What a loup-garou does is he worries you to death. In Haiti, it's a she. I guess women's liberation hasn't reached there yet. In New Orleans, it's a male. What loup-garou does is it comes into the settlements at night and steals away the chickens and children and anything it gets his hands on. Of course, trying to give a modern sophisticated interpretation of this, I see loup-garou as a psychic thief that wears down your energy like psychic vampirism. I guess you know a lot of people like that, loup-garous. Ishmael Reed: The way you get rid of a loup-garou is you put 99 beans outside your house, if you have this thing draining your energy. A loup-garou comes, when it comes, it counts the 99 beans and it looks for the 100th bean all night, and it of course can't find it, and it dissipates with the dawn. I put this in a blues form too, it's called Loup Garou Means Change Into, which is what it does, a loup-garou can become anything. Animals, plants, man, anything, trees. Anyway, I'll read the poem. If loup-garou means change into, when will I banish mine. I said, if loup-garou means change into, when will I shed mine. This eager beast inside of me seems never satisfied. I was driving on the Nimitz, wasn't paying it no mind. I was driving on the Nimitz, wasn't paying it no mind. Before you say, "Mr. Five by Five," I was doing 99. Ishmael Reed: Well, my Cherokee is crazy, can't drink no more than four. My Cherokee is crazy, can't stand on more than four. By the time I had my 15th one, I was whooping across the floor. I was talking whiskey talking, I was whooping across the floor. Well, I whistled at a Gypsy who was reading at my cards, she was looking at my glad hand when something came across the yard. Started wafting across the kitchen, started drifting in the room. The Black went out her eyeballs, a cat sprung across her tomb. I could not know what happened until I looked behind the door, where I saw her cold pale husband who's been dead since '44. Ishmael Reed: They say if you can get your 30, you can get your 35. Folks say if you can get your 30, you can make it to 35. The only stipulation is you leave your beast outside. Loup-garou, the violent one, when will you lay off me? Loup-garou, the evil one, release my heart, my seed. Your storm has come too many times and yanked me to your sea. I said, "Please, Mr. Loup-garou, when will you drop my goat?" I said, "Mercy, Mr. Loup-garou, please give me victory." I put out the beans that evening, next morning I was free. Ishmael Reed: A birthday poem called, the Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday, last year. 35, I have been looking forward to you for many years now, so much so that I feel you and I are old friends. So on this day, 35, I propose a toast to me and you. 35, from this day on, I swear before the bountiful Osiris that if I ever, if I ever try to bring out the best in folks again I want somebody to take me outside and kick me up and down the sidewalk. Or set me in a corner with a funnel on my head. Make me as hard as a rock, 35, like the fellow in the story about the big one that got away. Let me laugh my head off with Moby Dick as we reminisce about them suckers who went down with the Pequod. Ishmael Reed: 35, I ain't been mean enough, make me real, real mean. Mean as old Marie rolling her eyes. Mean as the town Bessie sings about where all the birds sing bass. 35, make me Tennessee mean, cobra mean, cuckoo mean, Injun mean, Dracula mean, Beethovenian-brows mean, Miles Davis mean. Don't offer assistance when quicksand is tugging some poor dope under mean. Pawnbroker mean, Pharaoh mean. That's it, 35, make me Pharaoh mean, mean as can be. Mean as the Dickens, mean as a mean. When I walk down the street, I want them to whisper, "There go Mr. Mean. He's double mean. He even turned the skeletons in his closet out into the cold." And 35, don't let me trust anybody over Reed, but just in case, put a tail on that Negro too. Ishmael Reed: Last poem I'll read is called Nickel. If I had a nickel for all the women who rejected me in my life, I would be the head of the World Bank. With a flunky to hold my derby as I prepared to fly a chartered jet to sign a check giving India a new lease on life. If I had a nickel for all the women who have loved me in my life, I would be the World Bank's assistant janitor. And wouldn't need to wear a derby, all I'd think about would be going home. Ishmael Reed: I think I'll use the remainder of time to read from a new novel called Flight to Canada. You recognize a lot of things here, so kind of a modern interpretation of the old slave narrative, which is an ancient American writing form and influenced a lot of successes. Like the detective novel with the flight, pursuit, capture, it probably comes out of the ... Detective novel came out of America, Edgar Allan Poe, the short story did, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe. So it has many influences, even influenced people who would be against the idea of a fugitive slave, like I'm sure the Fugitives, a Southern group of agrarian writers who were talking about the South rising again were influenced by this idea of a fugitive slave. Ishmael Reed: There are certain elements you find in that form, and what I'm trying to do, since everybody's writing their bicentennial books, Michener and all these guys, I'm going to get my two cents in here. You'll also find that in the slave narratives, some of the ones I've read, you find poetry and prose in the same book. That's what I tried to do here, and it's called Flight to Canada. Ishmael Reed: Traveling north from Virginia, after the third visit to the pork plantation, John Swille, fugitive slave, stopped off for a night of ale drinking with the free community in good old Manhattan. The next day, he was in Brockport breaking bread with some sympathizers of the cause. They drank wine and talked after he had read his antislavery poetry. A Jewish student was questioning him as he relaxed in his French Canadian post-18th century American home. The Jewish student was reminding him that he was a slave, and what did the other slaves left behind to slavery feel about his deserting him? And what did he think of those slave poets who had charged him with not being slavery enough? Ishmael Reed: Nowadays, they call slavery ethos, which was being hooked on values they had no hand in creating. While the Jewish student was questioning him, he thought of Katz's Delicatessen on Houston Street where he had bought some sauerkraut-ed hotdogs the night before. An older Jewish gentleman was arguing with a Puerto Rican gentleman over the quality of Katz's seltzer. Over near the entrance next to the man who was handing out red coupons to the slave, the kind of slave John Swille remembered working in the fields or studying. The slave was packing a gun and so maybe that's why the Jewish gentleman felt confident in his discussion with the Puerto Rican gentleman. Ishmael Reed: "Look, I used to work in a seltzer factory, and so I know the different between seltzer and this crap you're selling. I'm never coming here again." "What do you want me to do, cry now or later?" Said the old Jewish gentleman. So you see, we all have our ethos, as we say these days. We all have our slave holes, John Swille thought, wondering how this young eager apparently brilliant student would react to the old man. Only one ex-slave has showed up for his reading, and a French Canadian host complained, "They ask me to get some ex-slave poets, and when I bring one, the ex-slaves don't show up." John Swille didn't mind if the ex-slaves hadn't shown up for his reading, it had been a long time since they were all manacled together and riding boats, and now they were free to attend whatever they wished. Ishmael Reed: The one ex-slave who did show up was a runaway from Georgia. She was round-faced, flax-skinned and wore bright red lipstick. She wore some beads around her neck and a sharp bandana. She wanted John Swille to tell her about Egypt. She wanted to know everything there was to know about Egypt. He referred her to the African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, written by Diop and translated into English by Mercer Cook. It was fortunate the host was French Canadian, because John Swille was full of questions about Canada. Ever since he was a slave child, he had heard people whisper about Canada. They talked about Canada as if it was heaven. They talked about its forests, its lakes, its snow capped mountains. They talked about the CBC was superior to American radio and television, how it was real cultural. They talked about how the prime minister was rumored to have some Native American blood in him. Ishmael Reed: One day, John Swille would go to Canada, but first, he would have to clear up a little stateside business. Not the kind people are accustomed to with its lost leaders, loan sharks, and higher pressure salesmanship. He wasn't trying to peddle a thing, he was a wanderer and would have escaped from slavery even if it had been the paradise painted by its apologists. He was a nomad moving about from sky to sky, on the run. "One must always defeat the bloodhounds of one's existence," he had told a student wearily. When he talked like this, he knew he was tired, and so John Swille returned to the motel. He rose to leave when a poet, one of the guests reminded him of a letter he had sent requesting some of John Swille's writing for a book he was working on. Ishmael Reed: In his letter, he had written, "My idea was to have each poet write about his or her own work. This still seems fine to me, best, but it's an awful thing to ask for. Still, I hope many of you will write directly about your work, as difficult as this may be. I decided to ask folks to write about anything, I thought that the book as a whole, even if the poets did not directly write directly about themselves, even if I asked them to write about anything, it would manifest our vital concerns. Would be an eclectic collection of the feelings of American poets of '76." Ishmael Reed: John Swille was embarrassed. He couldn't say that he didn't have a staff, his mail had increased in volume after six books as an ex-slave poet, and so he wasn't always prompt in replying to his mail. "I don't want to bother you," the poet said, "but if you could work up something say 3000 words, I'd like to have you in the book." He would work up something, but it wouldn't be in essay form. Essays arose passions, his essays had always got him into trouble by pointing out to his kidnappers, claimants and enemies where he was at. Someone had called him a rascal on a plantation because of an essay he had written. Ishmael Reed: The last time he had visited Beulah Land Publishers, they had trotted out an ex-slave fresh from South Carolina and dressed up like a low budget peacock to give him a verbal whipping, and the Negro warmed up to his role. His hair pressing against his skull and a dental floss thin mustache spread out in delight. The Negro told him how much his books were worth, and by inference, how much he was worth. Said he could prove it with atistics, said he knew all about atistics, as the white gentlemen smoking cigars chuckle over this good show. He was a green Negro, and so he didn't know about the Manhattan [inaudible] game where one slave was encouraged to knock another slave. Ishmael Reed: When he told his friends about this, about these ex-slaves, claimants, bounty hunters and bloodhounds on his tail, they called him paranoid. John Swille lived in emancipated California, everyone was free from the old passions like jealousy and hate. They didn't fear anything anymore and had imported new words to describe their freedom and liberty. He would trust his old instincts until the day he died, they might call him paranoid, but he would always be on lookout, because they weren't going to send him back to Virginia. He had heard horror stories about what happened to slaves who had been returned to Virginia. The worst thing you could do to a fugitive slave was return him to Ginny. Ishmael Reed: The next day, he flew an American Airlines plane out of Brockport, shortly on the right side below he could see Niagara Falls. It looked like a bright bowl of sherbet, white sherbet from the sky. Once in a poem, he had compared the situation of being a slave boy to that of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. John Swille sits in a Northstar Café, which caters to runaways, Indians, Chicanos, and whites with abolitionist sentiments. Though, once in a while, a Confederate wonders in. Like Confederates, they are polite in a steely way, concealing their disdain at the rising spectacle of Negro and white runaways mixing it up. Some Confederate spies are in town too, they drink at places with names like the Missouri Club where the waiters wear greasy ducktail hairstyles and smash the bottles after a slave has drunk from them. Ishmael Reed: Behind the bar on the shelves, cheap [inaudible] liquor bottles can be seen, and the jukebox is all country western. Confederate flags wave from the pickup trucks. Some of the followers of John Brown came north after the Harpers Ferry shootout where federal forces were able to test their counter insurgency devices, rode by on motorcycles. And here and there can be a survivor of the Nat Turner skirmish, which put heat on everybody, and according to some, postponed the emancipation of Virginia slaves. Swille was sipping a bloody Mary, the $.95 cent special in which a cucumber was dunked, reading a poetry magazine which was published by the free community in Palo Alto. Ishmael Reed: Stray Leechfield, one of the emancipator's runaway slaves had entered a poem. It was set up like a poem, but reading between the lines, you could see that Leechfield was paying off his debts to various copperheads, carpetbaggers, scallywags and others in San Francisco who had arranged $25 readings for him. Stray didn't really run away as the others had, [Copperban], Forties, Randy Shank and John Swille, Stray had strayed away and had only run away because it was the fashionable thing to do at the time. So his heart wasn't really in Emancipation, and he seemed to miss slavery. Always bringing the subject of slavery up. Here he comes now followed by a man who could be Eddie Cantor's double, only sinister looking. Ishmael Reed: Stray's friend exiled from Manhattan who is always downgrading the punishment the slaves received in Virginia, and promoting the atrocities of his own people over those of Negro slaves. To hear him tell it, no one suffered as much as his people had under the czar. The czar was cruel to him, and no one in the world of all of history, with the possible exception of the Hebrew people under Pharaohs had endured as much as the people under the czar. He had talked about this so much that John Swille went to the library and had found a figure in czarist Russia with whom he could identify, Rasputin. Like Venus, my spin is retrograde. A rebel in more ways than one. I click my heels in seedy taverns and pinch the barmaids on the cheeks. Madeira lifts my devilish beard, my eyes sparkle dark, flicker and sear. Man, do I love to dance. Ishmael Reed: Something tells me the czar will summon me to save his imperial hide. I peeped his messenger speeding through the gates of his winter palace, he's heading this way. Soon my fellow peasants will see me in the Gazette taking tea with the royal family. They'll say, "That crazy bum." He had only found that every people believes their suffering and atrocities inflicted upon their people to be the most famous and cruel, and it feels a kind of masochism involved with suffering and boasting, screaming. Yet I can not face heavy eyebrows, pop eyes, and wandered over to where John Swille was sitting in something that looked like a winged Chippendale chair reading a poetry magazine, minding his own business, sipping his tomato juice and vodka. Ishmael Reed: "Hey, man. Remember the time we was in slavery and you got flogged? The master called the whole plantation to watch you get flogged. It was sick supreme, but I'll never forget it." Stray squinted. He was dressed in his field nigger overalls and he wore his corkscrew hairdo. He was very dark. "Look, Stray, if you don't mind," Swille said, "I'd like to talk about something other than slavery. Every time I see you, you bring up slavery. Why can't we talk about emancipation sometimes?" Stray smiles with a steer in his eyes as he and his friend, a Whitman-ite whom we will call EC, heads out into the garden of Northstar Café, which is indelibly furnished with different periods of American history and old pictures and odd frames on the walls, a cigar store Indian or two, and posters. Ishmael Reed: "If I were a man, I'd join the Navy." A '40s girl in a Navy suit's saying this. EC, Stray's friend was a dedicated Whitman night. John Swille had read with Whitman recently in Washington DC, and Whitman had read a poem called Respondez, recommending all manner of excesses. Lunatics running the asylum, prisoners supervising the jails, in short, a society in which everybody ran along naked out of their minds screaming wildly. This group of Whitman-ites were under the control of a former computer employee and part of their initiation rights involved [inaudible] with dogs and eating pig excrement. Ishmael Reed: The Washington Post carried two pictures of Whitman, and none of Swille, even though he had shared the program. The Washington Evening Star, a fair-skinned free woman and Africaness god could only think to mention John Swille's paunch. You could tell what people thought of him by the way they saw him, his enemies could see his paunch. They see him by what he weighs, not by what he does. Actually, he's not fat, he's swelled, he's earned his swell the hard way. He's swelled, but he's trying to do his work. He puffs up before a book, and then he goes down again, get thin and don't do much but make spiteful critical remarks about others, he makes spiteful critical remarks about others too, and some of these have gone into his poetry. Ishmael Reed: Randy Shank enters the Northstar. Randy Shank is dressed up like an old African Dahomian King with bright colors, bobbles, buckles or fancy brim, all he needs is his umbrella. He is smoking a cigar. He ignores John Swille because he's some-timing it, or it could be because there are so many attractive women sitting about chatting. They are dressed in clothes from different periods, just as the furniture is drawn from different periods, and the hairstyles are from the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s. The other ex-slaves ridicule Randy Shank, but Shank laughs all the way to the freedom in press. When he ran away from the plantation, he had taken the master for all he was worth. Mama's jewels, stocks, bonds, cash, everything. Ishmael Reed: He took his master's whole Bank of America. He spends his money on beautiful women, big cars and closets full of clothes. Every time Randy Shank went for a drive in his custom made free-mobile, the Emancipated police would stop him. You see, Emancipated was a liberal progressive freedom loving town, but don't get too smart, nigger. You have blisters like this, slave's humble, not flamboyant. The posters they prepared for their antislavery riots always noted, "Please help them, because they can not help themselves." Speaking of slaves, Copperban, Forties, Randy Shanks, Stray Leechfield and others who had escaped from Ginny and had come to Emancipated, all had emotions of what it meant to be a fugitive slave. Ishmael Reed: John Swille's poetry spoke for him. His poetry was against spiritual binding, psychological shackling. The poems about himself were readings from his inner self, which knew more about his future than he did. While others had their tarot cards, their Ouija boards, their I Ching and their cowrie shells, he had his writings. John Swille was so much against slavery that he was beginning to include poetry and prose in the same book, so they wouldn't be apart. A practice that his ancestor slave writers, William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb and others had begun. He wanted to be the head of a marriage service for poetry and prose, he preferred Canada to slavery, whether Canada was exile, death, art or a woman. Ishmael Reed: There was much avient imagery in the poetry slaves, poetry about dreams of flight. They wanted to cross that Black rock ferry to freedom, even though they had different notions about what this freedom was. They had often disagreed about this. Stray Leechfield, a tattletale and someone who wanted the worst to happen to his competitors, and who maybe didn't even mean to be this way, but was, had come to him and told him one day that the other slaves were calling him a reactionary. A word that had been making the rounds in emancipated California, a town which welcomes catchy words and doesn't know when their words are worn out. He had written a poem about the incident, the Reactionary Poet. If you are revolutionary, then I must be a reactionary. If you stand for the future, I have no choice but to be with the past. Ishmael Reed: Bring back suspenders, bring back mom, homemade ice cream, picnics in the park, flagpole sitting, straw hats, rent parties, corn liquor, the banjo, Georgia quilts. Restock the syncopation of Fletcher Henderson, the Kipling-esque lines of James Weldon Johnson, Black Eagle, Mickey Mouse, the Bach family, Sunday school. Even [inaudible] who read the comics was more appealing than your version of what lies ahead. In your world tomorrow, humor will be locked up and the key thrown away, the public address system will pound out headaches all day, everybody will wear the same funny caps and the same funny jackets, and [inaudible] will be found expendable. Charm, a luxury. Love and kisses, a crime against the state. Ishmael Reed: Duke Ellington will be ordered to write more marches for the people, naturally. If you are what's coming, I must be what's going. Make it by steamboat, I like to take it real slow. Some of his poems would be bitter, but some were sweet too. Emancipated poets said they wrote about love, John Swille wrote about love and hate. He wanted to be natural and well rounded. It's hard to be well rounded in Emancipated, a town with one philosophy and one stop. Nothing to do but write and read the newspapers. Read about the prime minister of Canada, and how he had just won 141 seats in the House of Commons. There was a picture in Time of the prime minister standing next to his wife, she holding his hand, he looking down as if his sharp Indian nose would be her forehead. Ishmael Reed: There was a big sign over the archway where they stood written in Halloween letters, "Congratulations." His wife said of him, "He is a beautiful guy. A very loving human being who has taught me a lot about loving." The question for John Swille was, would his bondage be completely behind him when he reached Canada? He was still not completely free, though it had been a long time since he ran away, the first time from a pork plantation in Virginia. It seemed like 100 years ago since he first took off. Flight to Canada. Ishmael Reed: Dear Massa, what it was? I have done my Liza leap and I am safe in the arms of Canada, so ain't no use your slave catchers waiting on me at frail ways. I won't be there. I flew in nonstop jumbo jet this AM, had champagne and something called [inaudible], compliments of the captain who announced that a runaway Negro was on the plane. Passengers came up and shook my hand. Within 10 minutes, I had signed up with three antislavery lectures. Remind me to get an agent. Traveling in style beats craning your neck after the Northstar and hiding in the bushes anytime, massa. Besides, your Negro dogs of Hays and Allen stock can't fly. Ishmael Reed: By now, I suppose that yellow Judas Cato had told you that I have snuck back to the plantation three, maybe four times since I left the first time. Last visit, I slept in your bed and sampled your cellar. Had your favorite [inaudible] give me some she-bear, mellow. You was away at a slave auction in Ryan's Mart in Charleston, and so I know you wouldn't mind. Did you have a nice trip, massa? I borrowed your cotton money to pay for my ticket and get me started in this place called Saskatchewan. It's cold up here, but least nobody is cowering, hobbling, gagging, handcuffing, yoking, chaining and thumb screwing you like you was a hobbyhorse. Ishmael Reed: The mistress Miss Lady give me the combination to your safe, don't blame the feeble old soul, captain. I told her you needed some more money to shop with and you sent me from Charleston to get it. Don't worry, your employees won't miss it and I accept it was a down payment on my back wages. I must close now, massa. By the time you get this letter, old Sam will probably have took you to the deep six. That was rat poison I left in your old crow. Ishmael Reed: Suddenly, there was a commotion outside. Wailing sirens, cars and trucks were screeching, honking, tooting and blaring. People had gathered in little patches talking excitedly. Some staring at the fireworks in the Emancipated skies. Customers began to empty the Northstar Café. Stray, Leechfield and EC ran out in their denim bodies passing by Swille's table. Even the imperturbable Randy Shank looked up from his date. John Swille paid his bill and left a 10% tip. He walked into Democracy Street to see what was going on. Had San Francisco had an earthquake? No, the Confederates have fired on Fort Sumpter, the pro and antislavery forces had met head on. The Civil War had begun. Thank you.