Trouble man: Amiri Baraka has been under siege recently for his poem "Somebody Blew Up America." But long before the latest firestorm, this literary legend has made controversy a way of life - includes selected bibliography

Robert Fleming

at 69, Amiri Baraka, poet, playwright and political leader, is no stranger to controversy. But his latest excursion into mayhem and media scrutiny has a different tone from his past scuffles. After reading his poem "Somebody Blew Up America" last September 19 at a poetry festival in Stanhope, New Jersey, Baraka endured harsh public reaction, triggering outrage from the conservative press and Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League. Photos of Baraka--his face contorted with anger and contempt--appeared in articles that were highly critical, calling for the former '60s radical and New Jersey's poet laureate to resign and apologize for "his blatant anti-Semitism." Even the state's first poet laureate, Gerald Stern, a National Book Award winner, blasted the poet and the message of his poem. Stern said that he was shocked by the "stupidity" of it, calling Baraka "a liar," adding that he regretted having recommended him for the post, which comes with a two-year term and a $10,000 stipend.

The most offensive stanza, according to Baraka's critics, is the one that they say hints at a Jewish link to the World Trade Center tragedy. The poet's supporters counter that the words only strike a chord because of their dead-on imagery and symbolism:

   Who knew the World Trade Center
   was gonna get bombed
   Who told 4,000 Israeli workers
   at the Twin Towers
   To stay home that day
   Why did Sharon stay away?

In the white-hot glare of negative publicity, Democratic Governor James McGreevey rebuked Baraka and called for him to resign his laureate post, knowing that the legislation enacted by former Gov. Christie Whitman that established the post stipulates that even government pressure can't compel Baraka to quit. Legislation was introduced last October to amend the law to permit the governor to oust Baraka, thus putting an end to the controversy. A spokesperson for the governor said the bill had the support of both parties and that it was being put on the fast track to expedite its passage. The governor also froze funds for the stipend, further punishing the maverick black writer.

Since the furor broke last fall, the pressure on Baraka remains high, with the Jewish Defense League and popular Jewish newspapers, such as The Jewish World Review, labeling the patriarch of modern black poetry "New Jersey's bigot laureate." Ten months after the reading, Baraka remains adamant that he will not resign and that he is fighting for the rights of poets and the First Amendment. Ten separate bills are pending in the state legislature to abolish Baraka's post with a vote expected in February.

When I recently caught up with Baraka at his Newark home after a rousing tribute in Manhattan and other rallies in his support, the poet was quick to dismiss the fuss as much ado about nothing. "I was surprised by the total assault led by the Anti-Defamation League," Baraka says. "Their narrow focus, dismissing the whole poem to obsess on four lines, citing the mere mention of Israel as anti-Semitic, made me understand they are 0shielding Israeli terror, disguising them as `victims' and the Palestinians as the terrorists."

On the matter of the bills coming up for a vote in the state legislature, Baraka does not bite his tongue. "The New Jersey legislature cannot `end' my tenure nor withhold the honorarium," he notes. "That's why there is so much noise being made from them. The recent vote of 21 to 0 with 20 abstentions was to eliminate the poet laureate post. But there is no legislation that can remove me. There are 10 bills in the New Jersey senate concerning me and the poem, but it is very doubtful that any of them will pass."

Beyond the tabloid headlines, the bickering and the brouhaha over the poem, the legacy of Baraka and his accomplishments as a major American literary figure have been overlooked and maligned.

Born Everett Leroy Jones (he changed his name later to LeRoi) in Newark, New Jersey, in 1934, to a middle-class family, Baraka attended the city's local schools. After his high school graduation in 1951, he enrolled at the Newark campus of Rutgers University with a science scholarship. A year later, he transferred to Howard University and focused on English literature, taking classes with noted sociologist E. Franklin Frazier (Black Bourgeoisie, The Negro Family in the United States). Soon thereafter, Baraka became disenchanted with the "bourgeois conservative" atmosphere of the school and dropped out in 1954.

Then came a stint in the Air Force, where Baraka was charged with being "a Communist influence"--a major concern during McCarthyism of the 1950s--and discharged from the service. After his return to civilian life, he moved to Manhattan's bohemian Lower East Side and became part of the Beat movement that included writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O' Hara, Gregory Corso and Diane Di Prima. He also married Hettie Cohen, a union that would last several years and produce two daughters.

The end of his marriage in 1965 marked Baraka's move uptown and his embrace of black cultural nationalism as the driving force in his ever-growing number of important works. While the assassination of Malcolm X and widespread riots were rocking America, Baraka was positioning himself as the spokesman for a new Black Power movement in the arts by creating works such as The System of Dante's Hell (1965), Tales (1967) and Black Fire (1968), an influential collection of black writing co-edited by Baraka and Larry Neal. Sometime in the mid-1960s, he changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka, which means "blessed prince."

He was a pivotal figure in the election of Newark's first black mayor, Kenneth Gibson in 1970. During the '70s, he reassessed his black-nationalist stance, criticizing its limitations, and embraced socialism. His message of race pride, self-determinism and political activism could still be found in the flurry of work published in this period; books such as In Our Terribleness (1970), Raise Race Rays Raze: Essays Since 1975 and Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1979). At a time when many Black Arts Movement writers saw their talents cool, the poems, plays and essays continued to flow from Baraka, including mesmerizing dramas like Dutchman and The Slave. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as he evolved both artistically and politically, Baraka published Daggers and Javelins: Essays, 1974-1979 (1984), The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka (1984), Eulogies (1996) and Six Persons: Novel and Short Stories (1998).

In an almost chameleon-like way, Baraka pushed his stylistic prowess as a poet, essayist and novelist to the limit. Going from a formal, Beat-influenced approach of startling images and wordplay to a more verbal, accessible format, which only increased his popularity. Some have criticized this transition as an example of a former wordsmith's rapid decline. But Baraka sees it differently.

"I have changed over the years because I have struggled to understand and change the world," says Baraka. "People who question change cannot really be trying to do this. How can you be in the world and your ideas over the years remain the same," he observes. "Those who question change are intellectually lazy, or suffer from the passivity of the overstuffed or cryptically satisfied."

While much of his early works are out of print, Baraka notes that part of what has happened has to do with the consolidation of American publishers and the stress on profits, and what he terms "covers" (when a white artist duplicates the work of a black artist and becomes more famous) of legitimate work with sensational imitations. "Black literature has been deeply co-opted by super-structural `covers' as in our music," he says.

"Since Dun & Bradstreet reported that the largest incremental leap in book buyers was among young black people, the corpses, as in rap, have covered or marginalized and obscured the most serious and committed young, black artists, with some Negroes committed to self-gratification and `getting over.' Or pleasing the master," he suggests. "Their work is superficial, frivolous, and tied to the shallow commercialism of the mainstream. The so-called mainstream `covers' its most significant, profound artists," Baraka adds. "Not only is the Black Arts Movement covered and denigrated by pimp Negroes and white folks, the Negro writers and artists raised by academic and commercial institutions are superficial hacks or openly reactionary," he says.

"The historic paradigm of the revolutionary democratic tradition of Afro-American literature is assaulted and obscured as much as possible," he asserts. "The works of Frederick Douglass, Sterling Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois, Margaret Walker, Ted Ward, Henry Dumas, Larry Neal, Lorraine Hansberry, Rudolph Fisher, Wallace Thurman and Claude McKay are mostly hidden. Langston gets mentioned more and more, but the great works of his in fiction and drama are left untouched. Where are the great plays of Hansberry, Baldwin, Ward, Bullins and Caldwell," says Baraka, continuing his rant. "Instead, we get plays glorifying the most cowardly sector of the Negro petty bourgeoisie, some even caricaturing great black artists or opposing the Afro-American liberation itself!"

Baraka, who often appears with younger hip-hop poets in performance slams, is more optimistic about the current state of poetry. "Poetry is alive and well," he says. "Afro-American and Latino poetry is at a point of artistic excellence and political insurgency. There are hundreds of young black and Latino poets, some whites as well, creating verses of revolution and resistance. There is no genre of art in the U.S. as consciously anti-imperialist, antiracist, radical and revolutionary as the work of these poets," he continues. "As uneven as the TV show Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry is, it still presents an often exciting flash of new and young, and some not-so-young poets who are now or will be very important and influential voices."

While others of his generation criticize rap as an art form, he judges the music by the same criteria as the Black Arts Movement. "Rap remains important," says Baraka. "It began as inspiring and innovative, as a grassroots form with a radical and passionate content. I was impressed very early because I knew it was the poetic genre predicted by the Black Arts: one, black; two, mass-oriented; and three, revolutionary," he says, in describing the criteria.

"But this new music has been sabotaged, covered by fusion and racist claims of co-origination and ultimate mastery by others, like R&B was co-opted by rock and roll," he says. "Rap is co-opted by Eminem and the corporations take hold and use the carrot of money and fame to change the art."

One of the most active and prolific scribes of our time, Baraka cherishes his "down time," painting and creating artwork, which is rapidly gaining recognition. In fact, he has already had two one-man shows. He continues to tour in his series of monthly poetry readings as poet laureate, and for the past 15 years, has helped to coordinate an arts space codirected by his wife, Amina.

Facing the onset of diabetes, the poet is not on insulin and conscientious about what he eats. Relaxation also means watching old movies, reading three newspapers daily, and an essay or two from Baldwin's The Price of the Ticket a couple days a week at breakfast. A copy of Fidel Castro's speeches, Ho Chi Minh's biography or Cabral's writings might be at his bedside, as well poetry from Roque Dalton, Jacques Roumain, and Linton Kwesi Johnson. As for jazz, he tries to listen to Sun Ra a few times a week, along with Duke, Coltrane and Monk.

More than anything, Baraka is proud of his marriage to his wife, Amina, who has been his partner and soul mate for 35 years, and mother of five of his nine children. She has two children from a previous marriage, and he has four from his first marriage and previous relationships. His son Ras has followed in his footsteps and is a fine poet who has recorded two poetry CDs, one with Grammy-winning artist Lauryn Hill. Ras is also a vice principal at a local high school and recently ran for Newark City Council, but lost by 115 votes. His consolation prize was being appointed deputy mayor by Newark Mayor Sharpe James. Baraka's eldest son, Obalaji, coaches sports at Shabazz High School in Newark and directs a city recreation program. Amiri Jr. is CEO of an entertainment company. Shani, his daughter, a former all-American point guard in college, teaches at Vailsburg Middle School in Newark. Ahi, the youngest son, is still recovering from a gunshot wound to the head fired by "a knucklehead," says Baraka. Also a writer, Ahi accompanies Baraka on tour.

James Baldwin once said, "A writer can live a long time on one book and a reputation." That's not the case with Amiri Baraka. He has a collection of short stories, two essay collections, a book of new and collected plays, and three novels ready to go. He is also preparing a lawsuit against his old publisher, William Morrow, for allowing many of his books to go out of print. Even now, he is sitting at his desk, working on his next poem, his next essay, his next masterpiece.

Selected Bibliography of Amiri Baraka

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Totem/ Corinth Books, June 1961 (out of print), ASIN 0-870-91048-5

The Dead Lecturer: Poems Grove Press, October 1964 $6.95, ASIN 0-394-17247-7

The System of Dante's Hell Grove Press, June 1967 $14.90, ASIN 0-394-17110-1

Tales, Grove Press October 1967, $5.95 ASIN 0-394-17150-0

Black Magic: Sabotage, Target Study, Black Art: Collected Poetry, 1961-1967 Bobbs-Merrill Co., June 1969 (out-of-print) ASIN 0-672-50617-3

Raise, Race, Rays, Raze: Essays Since 1965 Random House, Dec. 1971 $24.75, ASIN 0-394-46222-X

Anthology of African American Women: Confirmation Men (with Amina Baraka) William Morrow, March 1983 $12.50, ASIN 0-688-01582-4

Blues People: Negro Music in White America, William Morrow, September 1983 $13.00, ISBN 0-688-18474-X

Daggers and Javelins: Essays, 1974-1979 William Morrow, April 1984 $27.50, ASIN 0-688-03432-2

The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (with Amina Baraka) William Morrow, May 1987 $15.35, ASIN 0-688-04388-7

Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amid Baraka/LeRoi

Jones (edited by Paul Vangelisti) Marsilio Publishers October 1995, $17.95 ISBN 1-568-86014-5

Wise Why's Y's: The Griot's Song Third World Press December 1995, $12.00 ISBN 0-883-78150-6

Eulogies (edited by Michael Schwartz), Marsilio Publishers November 1996, $22.95 ISBN 1-568-86007-2

Home: Social Essays Ecco Press, February 1998 $14.00, ASIN 0-880-01572-1

Six Persons: Novel and Short Stories, Chicago Review Press, (1998)

The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, Thunder's Mouth December 1999 (2nd edition) $16.95, ISBN 1-560-25238-3

For more information about the author and to purchase his available works, go to www.amiribaraka.com.

Robert Fleming is the author of several books, including The Wisdom of the Eiders and The African American Writer's Handbook. Most recently, he edited After Hours: A Collection of Erotic Writing by Black Men. In this issue, Fleming sat down and talked with the ever-controversial Amiri Baraka about his career, family, and his most recent battle with the state of New Jersey over his post as the state's poet laureate. Read Baraka's take, beginning on page 22.

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