Who or what is the poet Ishmael? An intellectual anti-intellectual. A religious opponent of religion. A duelling pacifist. A black antagonist champion of blacks. A poet influenced by Yeats, Pound, Blake, and the Umbra poets. A Black Arts poet who attacks Black Arts critics and poets. A satirical creator of myths. An ideologue who derides ideologies. A poet who ranges in allusion from Nixon to Wotan and Osiris. A poet of the topical and the ancient. A poet ignored in Stephen Henderson's trenchant analysis of the blackness of contemporary black poetry (Understanding The New Black Poetry, 1973), but whose poetry offers a point-by-point illustration of Henderson's analysis. Stir these contradictions together in a vat of satire; whirl yourself wildly until dizzy; then pour slowly. The brew is the poetry of Ishmael Reed, to be sipped as delicately as one might sip a potion of 2 parts bourbon, 1 part vodka, and a dash of coke. There is no guarantee that every drinker will like the concoction. Occasionally, the sip is flat. Most often, however, it is quickly intoxicating. (pp. 209-10)

The great theme of black poetry, Henderson argues, is Liberation. For Reed, this term has double meaning: not only to get the white man's foot off his neck but also to escape the nets cast by his black brothers. (p. 210)

In addition to liberation, Reed explores black religion. Although Reed rejects the traditional Afro-American identification with Christianity and the current interest in the religion of Islam, he is no less devout in his desire to restore the black deities—Apis and Osiris…. "Neo-Hoodoo Manifesto" (Conjure) is his most explicit articulation of this religious creed.

Like other contemporary black poets, Reed draws his techniques from the black story-telling tradition to narrate the adventures of imaginary black characters. Reed actually uses the blues form itself, as in "Betty's Ball Blues." Or he hyperbolically describes a black character whose supernatural prowess derives from hoodoo power…. Often, however, Reed, writing in the first person, makes the narrator a hyperbolic character…. Reed infuses his narrative poems with a ribald humor, blending in allusions which demand a reader's knowledge of American history and black history (both in Africa and elsewhere).

For Stephen Henderson, the second element, structure, is the most difficult to isolate. Reed's experiments with typography are relatively conservative. He seems less concerned with the use of space on a page than with the capitalization of all letters in a line to indicate its stentorian quality, and the use of italics or lower-case type to give comic or didactic emphasis. He identifies the "prosey typography" not with black culture but with William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

As Henderson explains, however, black poetry relies most on techniques taken from black speech and music, and he itemizes eight "obvious" forms of "black" linguistic elegance: virtuoso naming and enumerating, jazzy rhythmic effects, virtuoso free rhyming, hyperbolic imagery, metaphysical imagery, understatement, compressed and cryptic imagery, and worrying the line. Most of these are important in Reed's poetry.

Virtuoso naming and enumerating is a form of word play that demonstrates the poet's knowledge and/or wit. Virtuoso naming is not allusion, nor is it the Whitmanesque catalogue intended to identify the components of a whole. Virtuoso naming becomes an end in itself, the list limited only by the poet's imagination, interest, or suspicions about the reader's patience…. A variant of virtuoso naming gradually leads us from our startled response to meaningless coinages of interesting sounds to our perception of meaning, as in Reed's gaggle of monsters to avoid:

                    The Gollygog
                    The Bingbuffer
                    The Moogie
                    The Fillyloo
                    The Behemoth
                    The Snawfus
                    The Gowrow
                    The Spiro
                    The Angew
                         (pp. 211-13)

Virtuoso naming is effective in oral poetry, for the poet appeals to the listener's curiosity and intensifies anticipation during the pauses between the items in the list. (In this he joins with the Black Arts poets.) Similarly, jazzy rhythmic effects may be more obvious to a listener than a reader….

[In] virtuoso rhyming,… meaning counts less than the rhymed sounds.

Reed's hyperbolic imagery has already been [mentioned], but he also employs what Henderson describes as "metaphysical" imagery—the combination of hyperbole, precise intellectual statement, and witty comparison into a passionate and unified image. Reed's intellect, reading, and fascination with esoterica often blur the distinction between his hyperbolic and his "metaphysical" imagery…. (p. 214)

Other black "elegances" of language appear in Reed's poetry—in particular, Aesopian understatement:

               A crocidile [sic] dont hunt
               Him's victims
 
               ...
               All he do is
               Open he jaws….

and such cryptic and compressed images as "gunghoguru … from d heddahopper planet." But the verbal techniques of wit and blunt language—outrageous, hilarious, ribald—are the summit of Reed's talent…. (p. 215)

Like other black poets, Reed relates his poetry to black music—not merely by writing blues, but also by incorporating or alluding to contemporary songs or spirituals, song titles, contemporary musicians, or by using musical tones as poetic structure….

Pulling lines or passages from context to demonstrate a particular technique fails to convey the verve or impact of the poem, in which Reed hurls the reader from one idea and device to another. An extended analysis can merely suggest the intellectual range, not the emotional effect. (p. 216)

[In "The Jackal-headed Cowboy from Ra"] Reed … conjures images of black power, and predicts that Blacks will crush a symbol of their economic oppression—the Wall Street moguls. Like Swift comparing writers with spiders spinning webs from their filth, Reed evokes the crushed stock-market bug whose "insides spill out like / reams of ticker tape," thus arousing emotional revulsion.

Reed vitriolically attacks the corrupt values and venal slogans slavishly venerated by "proper" Americans: pep pills (competitive drive), the artificially induced fetish for clean-liness and unblemished pale skin, antiseptic sexuality, etiquette, and other superficial paraphernalia of an "elegant" culture. His two-line insert of polite phrases is a mocking transition and prologue to the conversion of these values into a food that can be eaten only by indestructible people: an explosive stew "topped with kegs … of whipped dynamite and cheery smithereens." Evoking the images of blacks and black culture that whites have used pejoratively, the African-American god-narrator prophesies that blacks will pass through the baptism of fire and dance with the sun.

Reed's showmanship and conjuring can be spellbinding. Like T. S. Eliot, he demands that his readers comprehend his allusions; but unlike Eliot, he presumes that many who approach with child-like innocence will understand, or be fascinated by the sounds.

Reed fulfills Henderson's third category, "saturation," the communication of and fidelity to the truth of black experience—without continuously proclaiming his blackness. He carries no signs in protest marches, nor does he always write on black subjects. He decries popular white heroes while urging respect for black figures, summons black historical personages, encourages young black writers, and skillfully avoids European cultural entrapments. He compels by virtue of his effortlessly commanding black style. (pp. 217-18)