tions receiving further transformation when com-
bined with new traditions. For example, “Song of
the Andoumboulou” is literally a funeral song of
the Dogon, a West African people. Later, while
reading an anthropology text, Mackey discovered
that according to Dogon mythology, the Andoum-
boulou are an earlier form of human beings that
were flawed and that failed to sustain themselves.
This latter part of the puzzle is what gives Mackey
the context within which to compose his series of
poems that focus on not only fallen comrades but
the fallen ways of life, too, like the Mistress erzulie,
the Haitian voudoun goddess of love:
One hand on her hip, one hand
arranging her hair,
blue heaven’s
bride. Her beaded hat she hangs
from a nail on the danceroom
wall....In this poem, number 8 in the series, Mackey
explicitly uses Haitian lore to invoke images of fe-
male debauchery but still holds onto the goddess
portion of the tradition. Mackey’s erzulie embod-
ies womanhood, someone to honor and adore. He
continues, “From whatever glimpse / of her I get I
take heart, I hear them / say / By whatever bit of her
I touch / I take / hold.” This poem is emblematic
of Mackey’s interest in rethinking myth, folklore,
and language.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mackey, Nathaniel. Discrepant Engagement: Disso-
nance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writ-
ing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993.
———. Djbot Baghostus’s Run. Los Angeles: Sun &
Moon Press, 1993.
———. Eroding Witness. Urbana and Chicago: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 1985.
———. “Gassire’s Lute: Robert Duncan’s Vietnam
War Poems, I–V” Talisman 5–9 (Fall 1990–Fall
1992).
———. School of Udhra. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1993.
Naylor, Paul. “The ‘Mired Sublime’ of Nathaniel
Mackey’s ‘Song of the Andoumboulou.’ ” Postmod-
ern Culture 5, no. 3 (May 1995): n.p.
———, ed. Nathaniel Mackey. Special issue of Cal-
laloo 23, no. 2 (Spring 2000).
O’Leary, Peter. “An Interview with Nathaniel Mackey.”
Chicago Review 43, no. 1 (1997): 30–46.
Ryan DicksonMadgett, Naomi Long (1923– )
The poet laureate of Detroit and a cofounder of
Detroit’s Lotus Press, Naomi Long Madgett is
considered one of America’s leading editors and
publishers. She has advanced the literary career
of a generation of black and other minority poets,
has celebrated the experiences of black Americans
in her writings, and has encouraged a generation
of writers and students in her work. A poet since
childhood, she was born Naomi Cornelia Long on
July 5, 1923, in Norfolk, Virginia. Her father, Clar-
ence Marcellus Long, Sr., was a Baptist minister;
her mother, Maude Hilton Long, was an educator.
She spent her early childhood in East Orange, New
Jersey; in 1937 her family moved to St. Louis, Mis-
souri, where she was encouraged to write while at-
tending the all-black Sumner High School. At age
17, she published her first volume of poetry, Songs
to a Phantom Nightingale (1941), mostly nature
poems, which show the influence of the British
romantic poets John Keats, William Wordsworth,
and Alfred Tennyson.
In 1945 Madgett earned a B.A. from Virginia
State College (now Virginia State University). She
married Julian F. Witherspoon, the first of her three
husbands, and moved to Detroit in 1946, where
she worked for the Michigan Chronicle before giv-
ing birth to her daughter, Jill, in 1947. When her
marriage ended in 1948, she worked for Michigan
Bell Telephone Company until 1954, at which time
she married William H. Madgett, whose name she
continued to use after their divorce in 1960. She
completed her M.Ed. in English at Wayne State
University and taught in the Detroit public schools
(1955–1968) and at Eastern Michigan UniversityMadgett, Naomi Long 323