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The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas
Edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen , Laura Vrana
Series: Wesleyan Poetry Series
Sales Date: 2019-12-03
The first full collection of the works of a foremost African American poet
Lorenzo Thomas (1944-2005) was the youngest member of the Society of Umbra, predecessor of the Black Arts Movement. The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas is the first volume to encompass his entire writing life. His poetry synthesizes New York School and Black Arts aesthetics, heavily influenced by blues and jazz. In a career that spanned decades, Thomas constantly experimented with form and subject, while still writing poetry deeply rooted in the traditions of African American aesthetics. Whether drawing from his experiences during the war in Vietnam, exploring his life in the urban north and the southwest, or parodying his beloved Negritude ancestors, Thomas was a lyric innovator.
Acknowledgments • Preface, Laura Vrana • Introduction, Aldon Lynn Nielsen • Poems 1963-2005 • EARLY CRIMES 1963-1966 • "The way Egyptians used to sit" • The Unnatural Life • One Never Knows, Do One • Negritude • Domestic Horror
Toil • Embarkation for Cythera • The Blond Sinner • Economics • How Can I Prove I Am Not Modigliani • Great Love Duets • Engagement • The Convention • Song • DRACULA • Dracula • THE BATHERS • Onion Bucket • Twelve Gates • Other Worlds • I Just Want To Reach Out And Bite You Baby • The Bathers • The Lion Is The Lamb • Anubis • FIT MUSIC • Fit Music: California Songs, 1970 • SLUM DAYS AFTER THE WAR • Wonders • Enlightenment • Survivors • Heavenly Bodies • Faith • The Heroin Of My Youth • Grandpa's Spells • Historiography • [Liner Notes] • Bother Me • Sea of Chance (A Sailor Song) • Sugar Hill • Fly Society • To Speak of Woe That Is In Marrakesh • Better Physics • While Madness Reigns • Serpent Guerillas • Work Song • Framing The Sunrise • Fātiha • EUPHEMYSTICISM • A Song For The Banana Tree Sleeping In My Yard • Cosmic Communion • Blues Cadet • Paul Laurence Dunbar Views The Sword Of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Chicago Exposition 1893 • Euphemysticism • Suicide Administration • Ancient Habits Or Customs • Mouthology • Hurricane Doris • Evry Mae • Sprucing Spring Up On Larkin Street • Another Poem In English • JAMBALAYA • Rhumba Negro • False Alarm • R & B • The Architecture of Devotion • Saint • Witches • High Hell Jesus • Collective Poems • Spiritual • House of Red Lights • Sounds of Joy • They'll Be Back • Le Zodico Ne Pas Seul • Jubilee • SOUND SCIENCE • A Native Guide • Pyramids • The New Borning • More Than Nothing • The Persuader • A Judge • Duds • My Calling • The Offering • Speak Low • Low Speech • Electricity On Earth • Arc In The Dark • Magnetism • The Universe • There's A Lot Of Wisdom Here • One More Chance • What I Would Prefer • We Are Beautiful African People • Protection • Look What You Done For Me • Possession • Obedience • Oil of Gladness • CHANCES ARE FEW • My Office • Inauguration • The Fine Clothes Of Year Before Last • Farting As Decency • Sugar Hill • Security • Personal Anthropology • Broadway-Lafayette • Espadrille • Euchre Bridge • Wheeling • Too Loud For Names • The Rule Of Thumb • The Leopard • They Never Lose • Too Much One Thing, Not Enough Somewhat Else • Choosing Metals • Guilt • Canzone • Sketches of Susan • Electricity Of Blossoms • Hiccups after Leon Damas • Instructions For Your New Osiris • Shake Hands With Your Bets, Friend • The Marvelous Land Of Indefinitions • When Dukardo Boarded The Astro-Jet, He Already Done Seen The Movie • Home XXI • MMDCCXIII 2 • An Excerpt From Big House Movies • Screen Test • Class Action • Hat Red • Clear Channel • Salt • Discovering America Again • Happy New Year • Summer Stock • Art For Nothing • Things Could Be Worse • The Gods' Own Privilege • Souvenir Of The Manassah Ball • Liquid City • DANCING ON MAIN STREET • Mister Anderson • The Kite And The Hawk • South St. Blues • Please, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood • When If The Big Bands Come Back • Guerilla Girls • Displacement • Sentiment • Suburban Saturdays • Mourning Raga • The Audie Murphy Game • Destruction Of The Seated Man • Last Call • Excitation • Skunk Insulation • Grudge Match • Lifelong Learning • Otis • Spirits You All • Journey Of 1,000 Li • Tirade • Poem In Lieu Of The Marriage Of Andrew Zolem • The Sadness Of Space Exploration • Quiet Riot • Dumb Luck • The New South • Lights Out • No, Don't Get Up • The Failure Of Alchemy • Working-Class Hero • The Gambler • Knight To Queen's Pawn • An Old Hand • Pornography = Exploitation Of Men • Now You Can Worry • L'Argent • Thinking In Words • Like A Tree • Sightseeing In East Texas • Psalm • Back In The Day • Whale Song • Songs Without Shadows • The Marks Are Waiting • Dirge For Amadou Diallo • An Afternoon With Dr. Blumenbach • Dangerous Doubts • Lustre • Cameo In Sudden Light • Country Song • Multicultural • Low Rider • An Even-Tempered Girl Holds Her Breath • She Lived To Be 100 • A Kind Of Accounting • Cute Girl With A Toy Monkey • Flash Point • God Sends Love Disguised As Ordinary People • Magnetic Charms • Equinox • Back-Ordered Tears • ADDITIONAL POEMS • The Black Canaries Weep Over Gomorrha • South Afrika • A Tale of Two Cities • Grass • West • Political Science • Enuresis • Gilbert and Sullivan • The Conscience of Cole Porter • The Pornography • Linear Variation • Nichomachean Ethics • Chorus from an Unwritten Greek Play • The Color Section • The Judgment of Paris • The Fall of Paris • Robert Williams, Exiled in Cuba • Sonnet • Life on the Farm • Project Blues • Secrets of the Samba • Modern Plumbing Illustrated • The Subway Witnesses • Two One-Act Plays • Selena • From The Working Days • The Midnight Sun • Good Housekeeping • Five Empty Reams • Millenarian Joys Walking Vicksburg Blues • A Mingus Memory • Hollandaise Salsa • Diplomacy • Go to Bed Anyway • Nowhere Near Albuquerque • An Education • Downtown Boom • Ailerons & Elevators • An Arc Still Open • STATEMENTS • Statement for Jambalaya, 1975 • Statement for None of the Above, 1976 • Introduction to Chances Are Few, second edition, 2003
LORENZO THOMAS (1944-2005), was a critic and poet, and published volumes of scholarship as well as numerous essays, including several histories of the Umbra group. ALDON LYNN NIELSEN is the author of Integral Music: Languages of African American Innovation. He is the George and Barbara Kelly professor of American literature at Penn State University. LAURA VRANA is assistant professor of English specializing in African American literature and poetry at the University of South Alabama.
"This book is a collected poems of the complex and gifted poet Lorenzo Thomas...the editors have done contemporary literature a great service by giving us all of Thomas's poetry in one big package."
~William J. Harris, editor of The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader
"This generous tome of too-hidden genius griot-bodhisattva Lorenzo Thomas shimmers with an alert curiosity and humanity's tender blues. An important figure of second generation New York School practice as well a son of Black Arts and companion to Umbra, Thomas has never wavered in his celebration of ancestors from Pharoah Hohemreb to Leopold Senghor to Jimi Hendrix. "Stir it up" Thomas, writes, and he does. This Collected is a magnificent intervention of poetry's orality in a radical time he was very much a part of."
~Anne Waldman, author of Trickster Feminism
"Lorenzo Thomas is an essential poet of postwar America. His sumptuous poetic inventiveness is grounded in searing social consciousness. Through dazzling sound patterning and the deft interplay of conflicting voices and discourses, Thomas proves the necessity of aesthetic pleasure for waking us from the slumber of complacency."
~Charles Bernstein, author of Pitch of Poetry
"It is beautiful and amazing to have access to the vast range of invention, intensity, and surprise that Lorenzo Thomas's poetry offers. His contribution is indispensable, immeasurable and—even now, even here—unbound."
~Fred Moten, author of The Little Edges
"The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education regularly publishes a list of new books that may be of interest to our readers. The books included are on a wide variety of subjects and present many different points of view."
~The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
"[L]ong overdue. Thomas was born in 1944, died in 2005, and was the youngest member of Umbra, the predecessor of the Black Arts Movement. Much of his poetry was originally published in ephemeral ways, making The Collected Poems all the more welcome. These poems display Thomas's social consciousness and his place in the aesthetic tradition of his ancestors and black America."
~The Rumpus
"Lorenzo Thomas's Collected Poems records a lifelong commitment to the liberatory potential of Black nationalism. The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas (Wesleyan University Press, 2019), edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Laura Vrana, brings nearly all of Thomas's poetry to a new readership. Clocking in at more than 500 pages, the volume underscores his stylistic and thematic virtuosity, from the transformative mythic-political landscapes of The Bathers (1981), to the kaon-like minimalism of Sound Science (1992), to the introspective fierceness of Dancing on Main Street. Humorous, parodic, politically devoted, and formally experimental, Thomas's work amounts to more than four decades of writing that stood outside of both mainstream and avant-garde traditions."
~Poetry Foundation
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