Poetry. African American Studies. After a long hiatus from poetry, A.B. Spellman, a founding member of the Black Arts Movement and a nationally recognized jazz scholar, returns with an exuberant, generous collection of poetry entitled THINGS I MUST HAVE KNOWN. Touching on creativity and fatherhood, racism and workplace politics, his poems address the most important personal and public events of the last seventy year-of how it felt to grow up black in a segregated America, of the transformational experience of hearing John Coltrane live, of the give-and-take of a long marriage, and of the importance and inspiration of good friends. "Read this collection and you will need no one to convince you that poetry is a necessity"-Keorapetse Kgositsile, South African National Poet Laureate.