Bull

JUAN FELIPE HERRERA, Poet Laureate of California: "Bull swaggers blues & rams through Klan days & lynch nights & he meditates & rumbles on Presley & Memphis, he stops visits, breathes family, chows catfish, gets hauled off to prison, alcohol afternoons & contraband inmate pruno drink. He is strong & lyrical, and most of all, Bull gores the veils & static stiffs of history. Bull is hungry most of all, to come back where he started, where he is, unafraid of pain, for he has suffered, he is suffering and because of that his virtue is courage, harmony, love, yes Bull is doused with the blues of love, where racism, segregation, slavery, are part of the double-dutch, hip hop scrim where Bull rises and transcends. A power-poetry here - a liberation heart-fire collection by our Salinas Poet Laureate, James P. Golden--no other like it."

"Golden is a young man who is surely going to add to the rich tradition of poets, writers and intellectuals who have come out of Black America. His is an exciting voice, filled with creativity but seasoned, as well, with a potpourri of experiences..." JOHNIE SCOTT, cofounder, Watts Writers Workshop

"His vernacular and prose are a rare find, he speaks truth to power and that power into contemporary issues." Senses Lifestyle Magazine

"Golden creates phenomenal works of art." The National Steinbeck Center

"We are proud to have a writer that hails from our great city return with the gift of poetry." MAYOR JOE GUNTER, City of Salinas.

"Golden's poetry celebrates the contemporary experiences of young African Americans while delving into both the poet's professional and personal life." The Salinas Californian

"Golden's poems are frank, explicit, and poignant." ROBERT WALCH, literary critic

From the Author's Note: I can imagine the blood dripping slowly onto the mud beneath the dead man's body... and the smell of sun-stained flesh rotting above the lynch mob...and my grandmother's heartbeat as she unfolds her arms to somehow protect her children from the reality of the Jim Crow American South.

While my grandmother, Henrietta, wasn't actually at the site of Emmett Till's murder on August 28, 1955, there were others like him, especially in South Carolina. The lynching, murder, and castration of Black men prompted the unexplainable disap-pearances, forgotten funeral services, and bitterness at God. The lynch ropes left unfathomable scars, especially on the young.

I suppose my father, Bull, was one of them. Those scars resurfaced throughout his life in signature moments. Those recollections are the basis for BULL: The Journey of a Freedom Icon.

My father, while flawed, is a representation of what I've always considered the great Black American Man, the old school cat, the Bull. He falls in line with the icons that were raised during one of the most horrific periods in America for people of color.

In many ways, writing this book has been a cleansing of my own soul. I feel more connected to my father than ever, and he's someone I'd want to be connected to forever. As I experienced on the discovery of Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah, the stories of our elders heals our souls. My soul is healing.

Above all, I feel honored to spring from a man whose life has been an iconic guidepost for Black men-all men, really. My dad's tenacity and ability to overcome every hindrance of a pitiless world makes him Bull; an unrelenting beast stamp-ing his hooves through many darknesses or, like Emmett Till, a father of many.