Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 21:35:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Thomas Seay <entheogens-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Fwd: Amiri Baraka poem



--- Scott Hamilton <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> He
> moved away from the ideal of the 'well-made poem'
> toward a rougher, more expansive style heavily
> influenced by the jazz played by the likes of John
> Coltrane. 

Any comparison between Baraka's poetry and John
Coltrane's music is obscene.  the latter is a genius,
the former is a charlatan, selling leninist snake oil.


>  Make no mistake though, there
> is
> a great deal of form in the poem posted - consider
> the
> repitition of 'Who', the frequent half rhymes,  and
> the alliterated bs. 

Right, what a genius!  Repeating "who" and
alliterating Bs.  

> 
> why is this poem aesthetically
> unsuccessful?

Because stylistically it is boring, on the one hand.
On the other hand, its content contains the same tired
leftist platitudes.

> In order to answer such a question we must
> understand
> the sociological position of a man like Baraka, who
> is
> trying to create a new literary tradition, perhaps a
> new cultural tradition, on the bones of his arse.

He is trying to create nothing new.  There's already a
school for this crap:  "socialist realism".


> Baraka has to build his road as he travels it. The
> symbolic touchstones and aesthetic standards which
> exist in a much older literary tradition simply do
> not
> exist for him. 

Writing shit like this does not constitute avant-garde
literature.  I suspect that you think that it SUFFICES
to write a poem with "leftist" verbiage.


> 
> Baraka's situation perhaps mirrors that of
> indigenous
> Maori NZ writers. 
> Ihimaera's play was tremendously strained by the
> effort of trying to bring a mass of historical
> experiences into the 'canon' - into the
> consciousness


I am not familiar with this Maori writer, however I
cannot see that Baraka was attempting to make anyone
aware of anything new.  On any given day, you can get
shit like his poetry off of any of the many lists
dedicated to conspiracy theory.  For  trite marxist
homilies of the kind in the poem, one only need check
into Lou Proyect's list. 

Thomas



====Unlike its unruly city counterpart, the suburban body has been wholly domesticated and one can say that the suburbs consitute a huge petting zoo, with the residents' bodies providing the stock of furry mammals.  -JG Ballard "Project for a Glossary  of the Twentieth Century"

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