“And the syndrome goes on; this is only a poem, wondering when to our senses we will come home.”      ––T.J. Reddy (from A Poem About A Syndrome) Most of the more celebrated names among African-American authors, poets, and artists are known to the world because of their association with specific cultural arts movements. The recently-deceased  Amiri Baraka has been identified as a hero of both the late 1950s Beat Movement and the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement. Poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks and Sterling Brown remain renowned for their link to the Harlem Renaissance. One of the more powerful qualities of such movements is that they often inspire more creative genius than the world takes time to recognize. Or sometimes they produce creative thinkers of a type that “others” tend to fear and consequently attempt to destroy. It is possible both these scenarios may be applied to the poet, visual artist, human rights advocate, and educator k...

                                1972 Associated Press photo of Amiri Baraka by Julian C. Wilson . This story was originally published as part 2 of "Two Literary Laureates Celebrated: Herta Muller and Amiri Baraka." It was written at the time in honor of the great Amiri Baraka's (1934-2014) 75th birthday. It is shared now upon the occasion of his passing : While his was not among the names short-listed for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Amiri Baraka has long been lionized for his tell-tale intellectually precise yet poetic analysis of U.S. culture and his fire-brand style of political truth-telling.   A playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, short-story writer and performance artist all wrapped into one, the Newark-born Baraka attended Rutgers and Howard Universities and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He launched his writing career under the name LeRoi Jones with the 1958 play, A Good...

“He got kicked in the back He say he needed that He hot willed in the face Keep daring to motivate…” –– from the song History by Michael Jackson Upon the launch of the Guerrilla Decontextualization website in August 2012, the concept that inspired it was defined primarily in ultra-modern technological terms. Examples of the practice included the following: short clips from longer videos presented as definitive statements of an individual’s beliefs, photographs of private moments marketed for public entertainment, and statements made decades ago reported on the evening news as though they were made just a few hours earlier. All were instances of events removed from their original context for the purpose of fulfilling an undisclosed agenda. The result often went beyond simple defamation of character, which is generally defined as any knowingly erroneous communication that damages an individual’s or organization’s reputation. By insidious contrast, guerrilla decontextualiz...

        Working cover from the scheduled 2014 book release Journey through the Power of the rainbow . “…We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century.” –– Aberjhani, from Journey through the Power of the Rainbow A frequently asked question among readers who took note in 2013 that I was working on a collection of quotations is: have I abandoned the idea? That would have been easy to do considering the reluctance of traditional publishers to invest in books containing any substantial amount of material that has been previously posted on the Internet. The challenge for me, and for the tech angels who get a kick out of throwing whatever pro bono support they can in my direction, was to take a deep breath and dive into the years of published books, unpublished...