For Your Radar.

So in the readings for my poetry class I have encountered a poet named Amiri Baraka. I had honestly never heard of him before, but apparently he was once the Poet Laureate of New Jersey (which is just dubious enough to be cool).

There are a couple of things you should know before I say anything else. Apparently he was part of what’s called “The Black Arts Movement” of the late 1960s. Some people in that movement were also associated with (and part of) the Black Power Movement, though not all of them were.

Baraka – while apparently not militant – wrote militantly and a lot of his work seems to be pretty mean. Though sometimes that’s how it goes with political poetry. In one of his poems he attacks Jews, the Irish and Italians. Also Elizabeth Taylor. He also seems to imply that African-American civil rights leaders were giving blowjobs to Southern sheriffs.

Anywho, I bring it up because aside from being kinda nuts, he is also an amazing poet.

I don’t know enough about him to be advocating for him, but the man can slam words together.

Here is his poem “SOS”. Don’t worry too much about the sentiment; just try to hear the words. It’s amazing.

Calling black people
Calling all black people, man woman child
Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in
Black People, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling
You, calling all black people
Calling all black people, come in, black people, come
on in.

In his poem “Black Art” he tosses off some ditties the quality of which I seldom come across:

We want “poems that kill.”/Assassin poems, Poems that shoot/ guns.

and

Let there be no love poems written/until love can exist freely and/cleanly.

And if you really want to get challenged by some poetry, check out “When We’ll Worship Jesus” .

This is part of it that I like quite a lot (even though it is a bit cheesy for a man who is this angry all the time):

we worship the strength in us
we worship our selves
we worship the light in us
we worship the warmth in us
we worship the world
we worship the love in us
we worship our selves
we worship nature
we worship ourselves
we worship the life in us, and science, and knowledge, and
transformation
of the visible world


So like I said, I don’t know what this guy’s deal is (and he certainly has one) but I know that he is a capable craftsman of words and I wanted to put him on your radar.

Here is his website in case you find incredibly talented and somewhat crazy people interesting.


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