Lorenzo Thomas. Dancing on Main Street.

Lorenzo Thomas. Dancing on Main Street. Minneapolis: Coffee House P, 2004. 144 pp. $15.00.

Dancing on Main Street the late widely-published author and critic Lorenzo Thomas is a wonderful book that embodies form, sound, imagery, and language--the key elements of great poetry. Thomas, at the time of his death an English professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, had also written three earlier books of poetry, Chances are Few, The Bathers, and Sound Science. A recipient of two Poets Foundation awards and the Lucille Medwick Prize, his scholarly reviews and essays were published nationwide, and he was a founding member of the Umbra workshop and a major figure in the Black Arts Movement.

The poems in Thomas's last volume include some previously anthologized in such preeminent journals as Callaloo: A Journal of African-American and African Arts and Letters, African American Review, Xavier Review, Bombay Gin, African American Voices in Texas, and The Paris Review. Collected here, they are categorized in five distinctive chapters that provide an eclectic musicality that dances from page to page as Thomas skillfully leads the reader with seemingly effortless strides. "Any Place You've Ever Been," "Rituals and Improvisations," "The Simplest of All Mysteries," "Resistance as Memory," and "Dangerous Doubts" are metaphorically the feet that cause us to shake, rumba, shuffle, salsa, tango, Lindy Hop, and break dance to the poems that are truly the dance. The rich language and imagery of the poems in this volume arrest one's attention with captivating titles like "Morning Raga," "Guerrilla Girls," "Skunk Insulation," "Journey of 1,000 Li," and "Dirge for Amadou Diallo."

The compressed arrangement of the poems on the page combined with Thomas's signature honest tone engages the reader; lending the verse to being read aloud. We are lulled by his words, hypnotized by the execution of clever writing, delighted by his satire and wit, and dumbfounded in the manner he makes the mundane, trite, or unusual noteworthy and worth rereading--repeatedly. An example is "No, Don't Get Up":</p>

<pre> I watched her throw Her ribbons on the floor She put her foot down. I asked her, as she turned Toward the door "Where will you go?" "Crazy," she answered "And I insist on driving myself." </pre> <p>"Whale Song" is another poem that is magical when verbalized and obviously a commentary on the "dog eat dog" mentality that many people daily exhibit. This poem inspires the reader to view life more vividly by focusing on abstractions and resources (natural and constructed) that society often takes for granted. We see the world through the writer's lenses, and we ponder whether we are hunter or prey:</p> <pre> You just don't know How hard it is To be uncivilized You think that everyone you eat Deserves to be eaten

Lunch for me Means someone ain't coming home

So what If breakfast might have been The tuna that found a cure for cancer? Damn sure was tasty! </pre> <p>Dancing on Main Street is an example of poetry that does not feel like homework or catalogued catch phrases. It is writing that inspires and invigorates; by definition superb! It splendidly holds true to what John Ashbery expresses on the back flap of the book: "Lorenzo Thomas' poems have a graceful New York School nonchalance that can swiftly become a hard and cutting edge when he writes of the African American experience, especially in his adopted home of Texas. 'This useless clairvoyance/is embarrassing,' he confides. Yet Thomas' brand of clairvoyance is not only useful, but beautiful."

Van G. Garrett

Houston, Texas