From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: Amiri Baraka poem
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:59:23 -0500


Yep.  Lowe is right, IMO.

I have plenty of problems with Baraka's politics, in part from limited
first-hand experience, but when spoken from his mouth, with the cadence and
voice he brings, Baraka drops verbal bombs.  This is not meant for poetry
slam white intellectuals, but African Americans who are still very much
grounded in a tone and 'voice' and an imaginary of a heavily Christian and
Civil Rights/Black Power Movement sort, where Malcolm X and Huey Newton and
Martin Luther King are not mere 'people with ideas', but internalized,
living representations of Black people's resistance, names for that which is
best and bravest and most unwilling to give in.  I guarantee that when the
kids at my partner's school read it, and especially if we can get someone
who could perform it well, it will impact them more deeply than anything I
could hand them from this list, even though its politics are dubious at
best.  It would be good to find a way to say things this powerfully, but
without the paeans to Bobby Kennedy and all the other crap of Baraka's
Stalinist-Liberal politics (Baraka belongs to a Stalinist sect, btw.  Or at
least he did, for many years.  I am not sure if he still maintains his
allegiance or if the organization survived the 90's.  Many more of the
Stalinist micro-sects did than many people realize.)  The EZLN certainly has
not missed this point, as Subcommandante Marcos' children's books and the
poetry coming from Chiapas seems to make obvious.  So maybe before we spit
in disgust (or snigger snidely), we should walk a bit and thereby listen.

The limits of Baraka's politics here would be easy enough to critique.  In
fact, it wouldn't even be worth it.  But what about the form, the imagery,
the style, offers us something to think about?  Why would this speak deeply
to some people?  It is not, after all, meant for everyone, but for a very
specific audience.  The lie of universalism is exposed in part as the
mistake which no good author makes: there is always a specific audience and
something said one way only reaches a certain audience.  Our ideas must
learn to speak in every language, and that might even sometimes include
speaking in African American Baptist cadence, rhythm, and tone, to explicate
a content which would contradict whole cloth the usual content of that form.
If our ideas do not speak in the vernacular, then our ideas are good only
for Latinate priests or a revolutionary literati or English professors.

Then again, maybe instead of 'Moloch, Moloch', Baraka should be crying 'O
Multi-Dude, Multi-Dude/Wherefore art thou/Multi-Dude?/Mine cyberborg heart
longs just(ly)/for Thee/Oh!/Thou art everywhere/waiting for Militant Me/to
give to this/Thine formless mass/direction and guidance'

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: Lowe Laclau
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2002 6:03 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: Amiri Baraka poem


Baraka is a man who you have to hear to really appreciate. This poem is one
meant to incite, to make those in a slumber think about themselves and their
relationship to the global ruling class.
This as opposed to a poet more meant to be read, like Muldoon or Berry. Some
fall in-between like Sandburg.


>From: Thomas Seay
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: Amiri Baraka poem
>Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 16:05:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
>Why don't leninist poets learn to condense their verse
>into haiku or, at least, a sonnet? Send a copy of
>"Rhyme's Reason" to that man.
>
>I dont favor him getting the boot but that's a pretty
>mediocre poem...at best. If he had started screaming
>"Moloch! Moloch!" towards the end of the poem, I might
>have been more impressed.
>
>-Thomas





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