On the Life and Legacy of Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (nee LeRoy Jones) died late last week at the age of 79. The world knew him as a prolific poet, playwright and activist. I knew him as one of my favorite poets, among the first African American poets that I was exposed to and moved by in the 1990s.

I met Mr. Baraka at a book talk  for his acclaimed book of poetry, Tales of the Out & Gone (2007) at Politics & Prose in Washington, DC. After a brief reading, he signed a book that a friend purchased for me.  I remember him, even into his seventies, as a fiery, provocative figure who lived to inspire political dialogue through his poetry, essays and other literature.

I first read Baraka's poetry in high school in a 1963 publication of American Negro Poetry. His writing was juxtaposed to many of the greats of the Harlem Renissance, including Countee Cullen and Sterling Brown (one of Baraka's mentors). Later, in college, I read some of Baraka's more controversial works like his play, The Dutchman (which was the winner of the prestigious Obie award, sponsored by the Village Voice) and poems like, "Ka' Ba" or "Black Art."

Until his death, I had little idea about the formative and seismic impact he had on the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. His works, that I read in numerous Norton anthologies, only hinted at the activist the world knew. In the research that I've done for this blog, I learned that his work to date has been censored. I never read his most influential and polemical work. As a result of his death, surely there will be renewed interest in his activism and his legacy. I anxiously await the publication of a complete collection of his poetry in the years to come.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was known as a Beat poet and spent a great deal of time in New York and Paris with the likes of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Jean Paul Satre. He changed his name from LeRoy to LeRoi (meaning "the king" in French), married a young Jewish woman by the name of Hettie Cohen, had two children and lived in Manhattan.

By 1967, after the Cuban revolution, the assassination of Malcolm X and the Newark riots, Baraka became radicalized. He left his wife, Hettie Cohen, changed his name to Ameer Baraka, married Amina Baraka (nee Sylvia Robinson) and moved back to his hometown of Newark, NJ.

During the riots (which Baraka termed a "rebellion" in which 1500 were injured and 27 died), he was captured by the police and brutally beaten. In an account of what took place at that time, he said that the police interrupted his poetry reading and took his script from him, "as if it were a loaded weapon." First, he was beaten in the streets, until neighbors interrupted by throwing glass bottles at the officers. Then he was taken to the police department, where he was beaten further and brought in front of the sheriff. According to Baraka's own account, the only thing that saved his life that day was a call to the police from Jean Paul Satre (one of Baraka's cronies and, of course, a famed French philosopher). I would subscribe these events to urban legend, if I had not heard the words come out of Baraka's own mouth. See "Sources" below for details.

These ideas go to the heart of what the poet claimed and used to motivate other artists of his generation by the mid-to-late 1960s. Art for art's sake was no good. All art is political and the sequence of events in Newark serve to validate this premise. According to one of the panelists from one of the sources below, we, African Americans, have to continue "to develop our own aesthetic." We have "a distinctive viewpoint and different optical and auditory nerves," which is why our art "does not conform to mainstream Western values." This was the foundation of "cultural nationalism." Mr. Baraka aimed to foment racial consciousness and pride, which formed the backbone of the Black Arts Movement.

Baraka is also credited with being the first African American to write a book which traced the role and development of jazz from slavery into contemporary times in Blues People. According to his friends, like Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, it was in creating this work that "he found his voice." He mirrored Langston Hughes in incorporating jazz elements into his poetry. Today, rap and spoken-word owe their foundation to Baraka and others who built on this legacy of "mass-based poetry." Toni Morrison called Amiri Baraka "the greatest living poet."

More practically, at the height of the poet's growing cultural and political power, he worked to unify African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and other groups to bring about political change. He helped to inspire each group's own cultural nationalism and is said to have brought about multiculturalism as we know it today.

Over the course of his career, Amiri Baraka served as professor at Yale, Columbia, Rutgers and George Washington University, as well as, twenty years at SUNY-Stony Brook. He was the poet laureate of New Jersey from 2002-03. He leaves quite a legacy, in his children, his students and in his great writing. He will not soon be forgotten.

Sources:

Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/1/10/remembering_amiri_baraka_part_2_featuring

USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2014/01/09/amiri-barak-dies/4395467/

Fader:
http://www.thefader.com/2014/01/09/amiri-baraka-poet-laureate/

Introducing, Love Emphatically...

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that you enjoyed your celebrations. I am still celebrating because this new year will bring a new book for me--one which will be released as early as the spring. The book cover is an ever-evolving project. I wanted to share an initial sample with you. I hope that you like it! See below.

Double-click on the image to read the text