Three 1960s Black Arts Movement poets with St. Louis-area ties – Quincy Troupe, K. Curtis Lyle and East St. Louis poet laureate Eugene B. Redmond – joined the late Jayne Cortez’s husband, sculptor Mel Edwards (kinte scarf) and son, drummer Denardo Coleman (right), at a New York celebration of the life of Cortez (1934-2012).
Troupe and Redmond read poetry at the event, held in the Great Hall of the Cooper Union Foundation Building, which drew 1,700 guests and literary/performance artists from several African countries and across the U.S.
Other participants included actor Danny Glover, poets Amiri and Amina Baraka, Robin D. G. Kelley (Thelonious Monk biographer), Cortez’s Firespitters band, saxophonist James Carter, pianist Randy Weston and Coleman, whose father, the pioneering saxophonist Ornette Coleman, was Cortez’s first husband.
