Poetry by A.B. Spellman
April 1, 2008 • 6 x 9 • 162 pages • 978-1-56689-211-7
An exuberant, generous collection touching on creativity and fatherhood, racism and workplace politics, A.B. Spellman’s poems address the most important personal and public events of the last seventy years—of how it felt to grow up black in a segregated America, of the transformational experience of hearing live jazz, of the give-and-take of a long marriage, and of the importance and inspiration of good friends.
About the Author
The former Deputy Director of the National Endowment for the Arts and a founding member of the Black Arts Movement, A.B. Spellman has also been a regular commentator on jazz for NPR and is the author of Things I Must Have Known and Four Jazz Lives, a classic in the field of jazz criticism. During his thirty-year tenure at the NEA, Spellman deferred poetry publication resulting in this long overdue, first full-length collection—a masterwork of previously unpublished poems.