Lorenzo Thomas (poet)
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Lorenzo Thomas (August 31, 1944 – July 4, 2005) is an American poet and critic. He was born in the Republic of Panama and grew up in New York City, where his family immigrated in 1948.
Thomas was a graduate of Queens College in New York. During his years there, he joined the Umbra Workshop, which drew young writers to the Lower East Side of New York City in search of their artistic voices. It served as a crucible for emerging black poets, among them Ishmael Reed, David Henderson and Calvin Hernton. The workshop was one of the currents that fed the Black Arts Movement of the '60s and '70s, the first major African-American artistic movement after the Harlem Renaissance.
For more than two decades a professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown, Thomas also made important contributions to the study of African-American literature. In 2000, he published Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and 20th-Century American Poetry, his overview of the work of James Fenton and Amiri Baraka, among others.
[edit] Selected Publications
- Chances are Few (1st edition, 1980)
- The Bathers (1981)
- Chances are Few (expanded 2nd edition, 2003) (ISBN 0-912652-77-2)
- Dancing on Main Street (2004)
- Extraordinary Measures: Afrocentric Modernism and Twentieth-Century American Poetry (2000)
[edit] External links
- Obituary in the Houston Chronicle
- "Houston Loses an Important Resident Writer..." remembrance of Thomas in Houston Chronicle
- Talking to Lorenzo Thomas (Virtually) interview with Thomas @ The New Journal
- EPC–Lorenzo Thomas Homepage @ The Electronic Poetry Center
- FURIOUS FLOWER: African American Poetry, 1960-1995 A "Facilitator Guide" to the Video Series
- Black Arts Movement @ aalbc.com article from "African American Literature Book Club" website
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