To Repel Ghosts.

To Repel Ghosts by Kevin Young Zoland Books, June 2001, $26,00 ISBN 1-58195-0330

In bold strokes of audio-dacity Kevin Young has crafted his second book of poetry, To Repel Ghosts. An extended riff on the life and work of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, Ghosts tangles with a pantheon of historical and cultural figures and comes out swinging.

At first glance this seems a gargantuan beast of a collection, some 340 pages long, ostensibly with a single theme. The poems quickly reveal themselves, however, as collages built upon a hip-hop aesthetic. Sampling popular culture and diaspora folklore, as well as the journal entries of Andy Warhol and interviews with Basquiat and close friend Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Braithwaite), Young casts himself a poet-cum-dj, spinning the reader down a collective memory lane.

The Ghosts poems are called singles in the liner notes which complete the vinyl motif of the book, organized in what Young calls "5 sides in B Minor". "Hollywood Africans" is an exemplary cut. Turning economic frontierism on its head, Young casts Basquiat as the archetypal black genius invading white society. The author raps: "... Hip hop hippity hop--/Sunset Blvd/Walk of the Stars,/streets stretched/like limos. B/ at last in the black,/dines out at Mr. Chow's./IDI AMIN. 200 YEN./Put it on his tab--."

Two cuts back is #43, "Battle Royale" a round of jab-shaped lines whose syllabic attacks mimic their subject, Muhammad Ali, the Great One himself. Recounting the story of Ali's religious conversion and draft refusal, Young synthesizes this encounter between black hero and white imagination with the later collision of Basquiat and the art world. That he does it within tight rhythmic constraints testifies to the strength of this newest mutation of diaspora orality called hip-hop. Young's use of sampled text from Basquiat's paintings and graffiti, matched with a meticulous detailing of contemporary black male iconicity, gives these poems a freshness welcomed by to readers hungry for meaningful beats.

Karma Mayet Johnson is a poet, performing artist and freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.