Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. A meandering and dead-serious meditation challenging the centrality of Black Music to black poetry and black critical theory, Dear Angel of Death proposes disinvestment in the idea of the Music as the highest form of what blackness ''is.'' This long essay includes many forms: philosophical divergence on the problem of folds for black life, a close reading of Nathaniel Mackey's neverending novel From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, and an impassioned defense-cum-dismissal of contemporary hip hop's convergence with capitalism.