SOURCE: Abel, Robert H. “Reed's ‘I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.’” Explicator 30, no. 9 (May 1972): 81-2.

In the following essay, Abel offers a critical reading of Reed's poem “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra.”

Ishmael Reed's poem “I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra” turns on a series of elaborate puns and allusions that all reinforce the central idea that the old (black) god Ra is about to reclaim his throne and his power over men. In addition, Reed's marriage of “popular culture” imagery with figures from Egyptian mythology produces an offspring with some startling independent features.

Ra, the sun god and creator of men, was variously portrayed as a baby who grew older each day and was reborn the next, and later as a rider in a boat who traveled across the sky. In this poem, Ra appears momentarily as...