"I Am A Cowboy in the Boat of Ra," Ishmael Reed

In the introduction to New and Collected Poems 1964-2007, Ishmael Reed describes the influences on his writing and discusses his growing awareness of the disparate cultures that make up his heritage, cultures that had been marginalized by “a cramped view of the world, in which something [cultural leaders] refer to as ‘The West’ towers above all civilizations past and present” (Reed, New and Collected xv). He describes his efforts to “[recall] this past literary and oral history” as Neo-Hoo-Dooism (Reed, New and Collected xiv). In his essay “America: The Multinational Society,” Reed argues that the idea that America is primarily a product of Western European culture ignores the significant influences of Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Mediterranean, or Native American cultures on American culture (Reed, “America” 64-65). In her article “Ishmael Reed’s Multi-Culture: The Production of Cultural Perspective,” Sharon Jessee explains that

[a]ll of Ismael (sic) Reed's literary efforts - his fiction, poetry, essays, his promotions of other novelists and poets - support an idea which he calls the "multi-culture": an amalgamation of perspectives, art forms, and lifestyles from different cultures, past and present. . . . [H]is cultural "house" includes perspectives from ancient Egypt, Medieval Europe, Nineteenth century Haiti, and the American Old West, to name but a few (Jessee 5).

Both Robert Abel and Shamoon Zamir in discussing Reed’s poem “I Am A Cowboy in the Boat of Ra,” argue that the poem, through its multiple cultural references, suggests a confrontation between the dominant Western European view of culture and a subversive view rooted in the multiple traditions and cultural heritage of black America (Abel, par. 1; Zamir 1206).

Using Reed’s New and Collected Works and at least three additional resources from the Resources list on the following page, write an essay that examines the various “elaborate puns and allusions” (Abel, par. 1) that Reed uses in his poem “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra” (Reed, New and Collected 21-23) and explain how these multiple references present a counter-argument to the idea that America is primarily the product of a single cultural heritage rooted in European “white” culture.

Works Cited

Abel, Robert H. "Reed's 'I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.'" Explicator 30.9 (May 1972): 81-82. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 174. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2012.

Jessee, Sharon. “Ishmael Reed's Multi-Culture: The Production of Cultural Perspective.” MELUS: Varieties of Ethnic Criticism 13.3/4 (Autumn – Winter 1986): 5-14. JSTOR. Web. 30 July 2012.

Reed, Ishmael. “America: The Multinational Society.” Writing on the River. 3rd ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2012. 63-67.

---. New and Collected Poems 1964-2007. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006.

Zamir, Shamoon. "The Artist as Prophet, Priest and Gunslinger: Ishmael Reed's 'Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.' (Special Section: Ishmael Reed)." Callaloo 17.4 (1994): 1205+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 5 July 2012.

Primary Source

Reed, Ishmael. "I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra." New and Collected Poems 1964-2007. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007. Print. 21-23.

Secondary Sources

Ambler, Madge. "Ishmael Reed: Whose Radio Broke Down?" Negro American Literature Forum 6.3 (Fall 1972): 125-131. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 174. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 16 Aug. 2012.

Jessee, Sharon. “Ishmael Reed's Multi-Culture: The Production of Cultural Perspective.” MELUS: Varieties of Ethnic Criticism 13.3/4 (Autumn – Winter 1986): 5-14. JSTOR. Web. 30 July 2012.

Schmitz, Neil. "The Poetry of Ishmael Reed." Modern Poetry Studies 4.2 (Autumn 1973): 218-221. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 68. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 July 2012.

Requirements:

Length: Your essay must be a minimum of 600 words.
Documentation Format: You must include an MLA formatted Works Cited page that includes correctly formatted internal citations for all source material used.
Sources: You are restricted to the assigned poem and the secondary sources..
Number of sources: You must make frequent references to specific details in each poem (properly documented).
Format: The essay must be in MSWord format (.doc or .docx)
Warning: Do not read or refer to resources beyond those available in our course.

For this essay, do not use any sources other than the poems themselves. You may use a dictionary to help you with words with which you are not familiar, but do not refer to the dictionary definitions in your essay. Base your discussion of the theme on your own close reading of the poems you have selected.

Document your sources by identifying the poems (titles in quotation marks) and the authors. When referring to lines within each poem, you may identify them by line number. When quoting from the poems, quote exactly. Do not change punctuation or capitalization except, as needed, end punctuation. Be sure to use a slash ( / ) to indicate a line break in the original poem. Remember, if you do not need the punctuation at the end of your quote, you may eliminate it or replace it with the punctuation you need to end your sentence. For example, in the following sentence about Shakespeare's poem, "That Time of Year Thou Mayst in Me Behold," the comma at the end of the line from the poem is unneeded, but a period is needed to end the sentence:

Shakespeare compares his life to "the twilight of such day / As after sunset fadeth in the west."

Notice the / indicating the line break and the period which ends the sentence replacing the comma in the original.

Proofread carefully the final draft for spelling, grammar, and punctuation as well as clarity, conciseness, and completeness. The final draft should be typed, double spaced, one inch margins, in Arial or Times Roman 12 pt. Your essay should be a minimum of 600 words (two typewritten pages, about five handwritten pages) in length.