Listen to the soul-chant of Henry Dumas. His vision is the crucible-forged prism of BlackSpirit, warping and woofing all colors into a rainbow-hued coat to make visible the ethereal body of invisible man. His voice is the thunderclap of prophecy. The prophetic tradition in literature is by no means new, is probably as old as man's first excursion into the Kingdom of the Soul brandishing the rude implements of language. However, it is this characteristic tone that will distinguish the writers and artists of the new age. It will be their mission--and every generation has one--to cultivate it to full flowering.

--------

Listen. Listen again to the soul-chant of Henry Dumas. It is an invitation to worship and wonder. Listen to the sound of silence as it splinters into word, into flesh all natural things. Listen as Dumas speaks into allegory and paradox the bone of tree, drum becoming boom-sound of belly, the singing of skin pared with a thousand eyes, tongues hearing the whispering breath of ancestral spirits, vessels sailing into knowledge, "notes ... speak[ing] my people" (Play Ebony 3), womb of earth gestating into Time, the veined voice of tree chained "in alien temples with new gods carved upon my skin" (20), earth made into "flesh [that] bow[s] down on his knee"