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SPEAKER: The Twin Cities literary scene has lost one of its gems. The poet and playwright and performer, J. Otis Powell, died yesterday. He was 61. Those who knew Powell described him as an uncompromising artist, a provocateur, and perhaps most importantly, a mentor to generations of other writers and performers. Marianne Combs has this remembrance.

MARIANNE COMBS: J. Otis Powell lived his poetry. To get a sense for this, you only have to look at his name. At the end of his last name, Powell, J. Otis added an interrobang. It's a question mark superimposed on an exclamation point. Longtime friend and author, Alexs Pate.

ALEXS PATE: Who could take a punctuation mark and turn it into such a big statement?

MARIANNE COMBS: Pate says the blend of question mark and exclamation point is a perfect summation of Powell, both passionate and constantly questioning. Pate and Powell would often talk on the phone late into the night reading poems.

ALEXS PATE: I know this culture is full of poets, and people who think they're poets. But Judas lived the life of the struggle of the person who puts ideas and beliefs ahead of everything else. And I just didn't know anybody else like that.

MARIANNE COMBS: Powell moved to Minnesota about 25 years ago. Since then, he's worked with the Loft Literary Center, Intermedia Arts, Pangaea Theater, and KFAI, where he was a founding producer of Right On Radio, a show about the art of writing. He would often sport a vest made from African mudcloth, and in his prime, his dreadlocks framed his face like a lion's mane. Jazz musician, composer, and scholar, Davu Seru, remembers seeing Powell hanging out at cafes in South Minneapolis back in the 1990s.

DAVU SERU: In those days, he was one of the few Black hipsters you'd see out and about in. So if you were like me, you were often curious who he was and what he was up to.

MARIANNE COMBS: Seru and Powell eventually became good friends and collaborated on performances that combined Seru's music with Powell's poetry.

DAVU SERU: He's not the kind of poet that invites musicians on the stage to back him up, as he reads from top to bottom of the page. He's an improvising musician. He is an equal member of the ensemble. And so he would grab from any number of texts his own and others, read maybe a stanza or a few lines, and then move on to another, given wherever the music took him.

J. OTIS POWELL: My story is a runaway, hiding in plain sight, and telling truth no one really wants to hear.

MARIANNE COMBS: Seru says Powell was a powerful intellect, who demanded great things of the young artists with whom he worked. He was born in Alabama and raised to be a preacher.

DAVU SERU: To a certain extent, he fulfilled that call but from a different pulpit and to a different Amen corner.

J. OTIS POWELL: Handicaps, lay aimlessness.

ARLETA LITTLE: I believe we've lost a master of the African-American literary and aesthetic tradition.

MARIANNE COMBS: Arlita Little worked with Powell at the Givens Foundation, where he helped launch a writing program for Black authors. She says Powell lived with the limitations of being a Black man in America, as well as with the physical limitations of his body. He'd been in poor health for years following a kidney transplant. But despite those limitations, he was constantly creating and exploring.

ARLETA LITTLE: That's the embodiment of jazz. I mean, understanding the limitations that exist, knowing the notes and yet being open to new possibility.

MARIANNE COMBS: Little says while Powell mentored countless writers and spoken word artists, he would resist being called a mentor because he was always aware that he was learning and growing in the process, too. Powell published his latest book of poetry last spring. It's called Waiting for a Spaceship. Alexs Pate says it was an allusion to Powell's declining health.

ALEXS PATE: In the last couple of months, we'd talk, and he'd say, oh, man, I've been waiting for this spaceship. It's late. How long is this going to take? He was impatient. I mean that. He was ready. The pain he was suffering from, I mean, he was ready. And the spaceship was supposed to come and get him.

MARIANNE COMBS: Pate says the hardest thing now will be dealing with the silence. Covering the arts, I'm Marianne Combs, Minnesota Public Radio News.

SPEAKER: Tuesday afternoon's, All Things considered, from Minnesota Public Radio News.