The Paris Review - Fall 2016

threw it away. But Malcolm X complimented the poem. He said it reminded
him of Dante and Virgil. Back then we thought the Nation of Islam was
going to go south and kick ass, eliminate the Klan, and all that. But they were
nonconfrontational. It was King who was the militant.
INTERVIEWER
What did you do when you got to New York?
REED
I went to meetings of the Umbra collective, on East Second Street. We
were surrounded by geniuses back then, people like Lorenzo Thomas. He
was aligned with the white avant-garde and straddled these worlds—white
avant-garde, black nationalism. And then there was Norman Pritchard, who
was chanting and doing this rhythmic jazz, but he died mysteriously. And
Calvin Hernton—I later published two of his books. I publish these guys’
books and don’t sell them because I just like to keep them. Amiri Baraka, of
course—I published his book of cartoons and a play. David Henderson, who
later wrote a biography of Jimi Hendrix, was also a member. I met a lot of
painters and writers and musicians. I’d go out of the house for the newspaper
in the morning and return at four a.m. I’d run into Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Joe
Overstreet—we knew all those people. That was New York.
INTERVIEWER
You mentioned Umbra, the radical writers’ collective. A lot of these people
were part of it. What was Umbra like when you joined?
REED
It was already factionalized. The poet Askia Touré, who was then Roland
Snellings, was leading the black-nationalist faction, which was a first for
me. Because we were very green in Buffalo about political movements, I
had always thought nationalism was something that Italians had or other
Europeans had. I had never heard of any black nationalism, even though it’s
been around since the 1900s. And then there was an integrationist faction.
The two sides were irreconcilable. For one mad moment, I was caught up in
over-the-cliff extremism. It was the poet Joe Johnson and his girlfriend at
the time, Cathy Rogers, who talked me down from the ledge. When the four
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