Red, White, and Blues is the fourth installment of a large, ongoing project acclaimed artist Matthew Shipp describes as “a kaleidoscopic, deep, and opulent journey.” Once more, Sean Murphy explores America and its mythology through poems that function as biography, history, and cultural commentary. Where earlier collections focused primarily on jazz and blues musicians, this volume turns its attention toward politics and the figures who have shaped—and distorted—our shared cultural imagination. A moral cross-examination spanning history, war, religion, and pop spectacle, the collection asks what we worship, what we excuse, and what the stories we tell do to us.

Deconstructing figures such as Ronald Reagan, Roy Cohn, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, the poems dissect the ideologies and decisions that have impacted countless lives. Fractious events—including George Custer’s massacre of Native Americans, the police beating of Rodney King, and Rudy Giuliani’s crackdown on the homeless in New York City—are remixed with nuance and urgency. Fictional legends inspired by real figures, including Willy Loman and Gordon Gekko, appear alongside scenes from films such as Apocalypse Now, Wall Street, and Blade Runner, exposing how certain worldviews not only reflect history, but actively shape it.