The many faces of Amiri Baraka – there is no way I could ever do them justice in a short introduction like this. His work spans such a vast terrain - from his early Beat years in the 1950s and early 60s in Greenwich Village, where he co-edited the literary magazines Yugen and The Floating Bear, to his Harlem-based years after the death of Malcom X in 1965 which saw his involvement in Black Nationalism; and finally his turn to a more multicultural, Marxist approach in the 1970s.
Baraka’s impact on the American literary scene has undoubtedly been very great. As Arnold Rampersad wrote in the
American Book Review:
“More than any other black poet […] he taught younger black poets of the generation past how to respond poetically to their lived experience, rather than to depend as artists on embalmed reputations and outmoded rhetorical strategies derived from a culture often substantially different from their own.”
In addition to his numerous works of poetry, Baraka worked extensively as a playwright. He also published essays, short stories, and novels and wrote about African-American music. He died last year at the age of 79.
Links:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/amiri-baraka
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/amiri-baraka
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baraka/baraka.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/09/amir-baraka-playwright-poet-dies
My below response is loosely based on his Political Poem.
~ - ~
Love Political
It runs with reason and piles of heavy volumes
full force over the back of your hand
till the sinews quake
and you wonder how anyone was ever able
to hold on like this
in the dusk of intimacy
intimidation and third hand dreams
on tape in beat cardboard boxes
long before anyone resolved such history
into code and hung it to a cloud like childhood
summer showers
sweet and short and wet wet wet
It runs with reason
{ as reason like a rusty nail in the flower pattern
holding my great-grandparents’ wedding picture
in a faraway house
(blurry black and blurry faded) }
and the kind of grand
words we always hoped would adorn our
withered skin one day
pale like parchment paper bleeding significance
and stubborn in each sans-serif line
like possibility and justice
and worst of all what they call liberty
It runs with reason as it runs with passion
the spot on my neck where they both entwine
your kiss the conception of a good life in books
and coarse ground coffee
the twelve pound subscription to the LRB
your head on my hip
your thoughts and ideas’ deep rest in my soft tissue
when Eva said there are many kinds of knowledge
(she bit the apple)
and intellect is just one of many more
I wanted to tell her yes you are right
but this is political
