National Poetry Month 2023: A.B. Spellman

On the final Friday of National Poetry Month, WNYC's Morning Edition welcomed one last poet to round off a month of celebrations. 

A.B. Spellman is a poet, music critic and civil servant. He was a pioneering voice in the Black Arts Movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

He joined Michael Hill to talk about his bohemian days writing poetry in the Village and to give advice to young poets. 

After Vallejo

i will die in havana in a hurricane

it will be morning, i’ll be facing southwest

away from the gulf, away from the storm

away from home, looking to the virid hills

of matanzas where the orisha rise, lifted

by congueros in masks of iron, bongoseros

in masks of water, timbaleros in masks of fire

by all the clave that binds the rhythms of this world

i’ll be writing when i go, revising another

hopeful survey of my life. i will die of nothing

that i did but of all that i did not do

i promised myself a better self

than i could make & i will not forgive

you will be there, complaining

that i never saved you, that i left you

where you live, stranded

in your own green dream

when you come for me come singing

no dirge, but scat my eulogy in bebop

code. sing that i died among gods

but lived with no god & did not suffer

for it. find one true poem that i made

& sing it to my shade as it fades

into the wind. sing it presto, in 4/4 time

in the universal ghetto key of b flat

i will die in havana in rhythm. tumbao

montuno, guaguanco,  dense strata

of rhythm pulsing me away

                                          & the mother of waters

will say to the saint of crossroads

well, damn. he danced his way out after all