The Other Spellman

Back in 2021, I looked forward to watching the miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. I was most excited because the lead writer for the show is Malcolm Spellman. I had become aware of his work a while back. I started following him because I had been following the television writing work of his wife Nichelle Tramble. 

While checking out the extensive coverage for Malcolm Spellman and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, I waited patiently for someone to mention his father, A. B. Spellman, a poet and cultural critic whose works I first began reading many years ago when I was studying the Black Arts Movement.

Surely someone had to mention that Malcolm Spellman's artistic talents ran in the family, right? I kept waiting. 

The younger Spellman was the other Spellman in my mind, since the father Spellman had come to my attention first. But I suppose for many people, who weren't aware of 1960s and 1970s Black writing, then the father would be the other Spellman.  

Either way, I'm pleased that we now have a new book Between the Night and Its Music: New and Selected Poems by A. B. Spellman. Among others, he dedicates the book to his son Malcolm and his daughter-in-law, Nichelle. 

The  book is edited and includes an introduction by literary scholar Lauri Scheyer. Her introduction provides a really useful overview of Spellman's life, career, and poetry. He was a classmate of Amiri Baraka and Lucille Clifton at Howard University and studied with such luminaries as Owen Dodson, John Hope Franklin, Arthur P. Davis, and Sterling Brown. 

Spellman went on to make various contributions to the Black Arts era, publishing poems and essays and collaborating on projects with Baraka and Larry Neal, to name a couple. I often wondered why I hadn't heard more from Spellman much in the post-Black Arts years. And, Scheyer provided the answer in the introduction. 

In the mid-1970s, Spellman began a decades-long career at the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). "Because of federal conflict-of-interest rules," wrote Scheyer, "Spellman was prevented from while working for the NEA from publishing in the nonprofit press or giving readings in nonprofit venues, including colleges and universities." He retired from the NEA in 2005.

Spellman did not regret his career path. His work with NEA gave him the chance to become a decision-maker in the support provided to artists across the country. He was doing that work, even if he did not get to promote his own poetry. 

Later, I'll say more about the reflective, thoughtful poems that appear in Between the Night and Its Music. For now, I wanted to simply mention how getting this book in my hands yesterday took me back to that moment in 2021, when I was watching a television series and thinking about another Spellman's work. And now, thinking about one Spellman's work takes me forward to anticipating the upcoming work of a Spellman, who served as a co-writer for Captain America: Brave New World, which will appear in 2025.