This Poem is a Outlaw: The Demonic Inversion of Justice in Ishmael Reed's Beware: Do Not Read this Poem

Abstract

In literature the supernatural or metaphysical is often meant to work justice where it seems otherwise unavailable. The justice accomplished is poetic, employing metaphor because the physical, fallen (literal) world comes up short in that regard. One way of reading Ishmael Reed’s celebrated poem "beware: do not read this poem" is as a demonic inversion of this use of the supernatural to impose justice. If there is justice at work in the poem, it is from an underworld, or at least underclass, point of view – in Reed’s vernacular, a Neo-HooDoo view.

Keywords: Ishmael Reed, law and literature, myth criticism, Neo-HooDoo, modern poetry