Tom Postell : On the Life and Work of an American Master

The poetry of Tom Postell, believed lost since a tragic death in 1980, appears here in its first authorized, comprehensive volume. While Postell ran with the masters of Beat, Black Power, and Hardbop in the 50's and 60's, he has remained elusive, enigmatic, unsung. His poems provide an astonishing look into how issues of race, music, and the political avant-garde intersect at this pivotal moment in post-WWII America. Essays and hybrid work by giovanni singleton, Derrick Harriell, and Aldon Lynn Nielsen complement interviews, typescripts, and archival photos, making this retrospective of Postell the first of its kind.

ABOUT TOM POSTELL

Tom Postell, born Thomas Freeman Postell Jr., was a Black American poet born in Cincinnati in 1927 and closely associated with the Beat Generation, Black Mountain School, and Black Arts Movement in New York City's Greenwich Village from 1953 to 1969. A close friend and mentor of poet Amiri Baraka, Postell's circle included musicians like Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp and fellow poets like Allen Ginsberg and Ted Joans. Hindered by institutionalization, mental health struggles, and substance abuse, Postell disappeared from the literary scene in 1970, leaving a trove of innovative work thought lost upon his death in 1980.

"Postell wrote moon poems that would concern the authorities. A nature poet, jazz poet, love poet, and surrealist raconteur. He was multitudinous, hilarious, occasionally terrifying and always interstellar. In the pages of this iridescent collection, his voice arrives as if from another planet, another place in space-time, to call us forward.” —Dr. Joshua Bennett

"Tom Postell emerged from the mid-1960s Village literary scene as a self-sculpted, deft, barely-listened-to imaginal incessance. And yet, with this surprising new collection of unheralded poems, his work continues to radiate with incantatory significance. —Will Alexander