Amiri Baraka

“You are an artist. You are a writer. The strongest political work

you can do is in the arts.”

Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 2004

At the time of the 1994 conference, Newark, New Jersey native Amiri Baraka—poet, activist and playwright—was one of the most prolific and exciting authors in America. Born LeRoi Jones, Baraka was educated at Rutgers University and Howard University, and taught poetry and drama at the New School for Social Research, Columbia University, Yale University, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and elsewhere. Considered an architect of the Black Arts Movement, Baraka has published countless books of poetry, plays, essays and more, including Preface To A Twenty Volume Suicide Note (1961), The Dead Lecturer(1964), Dutchman + The Slave (1971), The Autobiography of Leroi Jones (1983), Transbluesency (1995), Somebody Blew Up America (2004), Tales of the Out and the Gone (2006) and the posthumous collection S O S: Poems 1961-2013 (2016). Baraka was also a central artistic force in the Black Arts Repertory Theater School in Harlem and Spirit House in Newark. Throughout the course of his career, he founded the beat poetry magazine Yugen, edited the African American music magazine, Cricket, the literary magazine The Black Nation, and directed Jihad Press. For his extensive contributions to the American arts at large, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a PEN/Faulkner Award, an American Book Award, the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York, and other distinctions. Amiri Baraka died in 2014.

Featured Poems

“Heathens”

“I am”

Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 2004
Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 2004
Photo: C.B. Claiborne, 2004

Interviews, Talks, and Readings

/ Amiri Baraka reads “Heathens”

Heathens

 

1  They Ugly 

         on purpose!

 

2  They get high 

        off Air Raids!

 

3  They are the oldest 

    continuously functioning 

        Serial Killers!

 

4  They murder 

       to Explain 

         Themselves!

 

5  They think 

       Humans 

        are food. 

 

6  They imitate 

     conversation 

       by lying.

 

7  They are always naked 

    and always dirty 

     the shower & tuxedo 

       don’t help.

 

8  They go to the bathroom 

     to have a religious 

       Experience.

 

9  They believe everything is better 

     Dead. And that everything alive 

      is their enemy.

 

10 Plus Heathens is armed 

     and dangerous.

/ Amiri Baraka reads “I Am”

I Am

Blues March

 

We are being told of the greatness

of Western Civilization

Yet Europe

is not the West

 

Leave England headed West

          you arrive

              in Newark,

 

The West is

The New World

                                not Europe

 

The West is

The New World

                                not Europe

 

The West is

          El Mundo Nuevo

          The Pan American

          Complexity

          As diverse as the routes

          & history

          of our collection

 

The West is The Americas

       not Europe

 

It is the America that the home

     boy tells, the sister we can

     see, yr wife, husband & children

Yr mama

Yr friends

Yr family

Yr close enemies

 

            Are West, the quest

                The Search

                for Humanity

                still goes on

 

But of the Euro White Supremacists

         The Slave Masters

             Conquistadores

         Destroyers of Pharonic Egypt

                 Carthage

 

Invaders, Destroyers of Moorish Spain

          Of African and Asian Worlds

          Creators of the Inquisition

          Christ Killers

          Murderers of thousands of Christians

                in the Coliseum

          Murderers of Spartacus

                Vandals

                Germ Mens

                DitchMen

                Boers

 

Destroyers of Mohodarenjo

        Tenotchitlan

        Killed Montezuma & Emiliano Zapata

        Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, even

        the Kennedies, Bobby Hutton, Fred Hampton

        Medgar Evers,

 

        The Aztecs

        The Incas

        The Mayans

        The Taino

        The Arawak

 

Conquerors

      of 

  America

 

Enslaving

 

Humanity

    in 

Cannibal

   Menus

Bush men living on human

          flesh as public

          ritual

          ideology of predators

          & blood covered claws

 

Murderers of Iraq, wd be destroyers of

the ancient Mesopotamian culture

         Assassins of Sandino

         Toussaint Louverture, Patrice Lumumba

 

         Enslavers of Women

         Overthrew Mother Right

         Killed Socrates, Copernicus, Lincoln

         John Brown & Nat Turner

        Amilcar Cabral & David Sibeko

 

        Who claim Civilization & Christianity & Philosophy as

        Crucifiers who worshipped statues

                 till 300 AD

 

       Who destroyed the libraries of Alexandria

             the University at Timbuctoo

       Who thought the wind made babies

       

Who say now they are the creators of Great Civilizations

         plagiarists, ignorant imitators 

         claiming Geometry & the Lever

 

Which existed 1000 years before

         they was even here

   whose great minds are thieves like

        Aristotle, Con men like

        Democritus & Anaximander

        whose Gods are the Vanilla Ice

                  of Ethiopian Originals

                  half dressed cave dwellers

                  painted blue

 

Anglos (knife wielding) Saxons

     Sackers (Robbers) of Ancient Civilizations

    Vikings whose Gods were drunk and rowdy

      robbers like Conan & Wodan

      

      Punks like Napoleon who

     got run out of Haiti

         by Toussaint & Dessalines

 

         who got bum rushed out

         of Russia

         wacked out

        racist monsters

    shot the nose & mouth

       off the Sphinx

       so sick &

 

    anti-life & history were they

       who put Mali and Songhay &

       all Africa

       in Slave Ships

 

       for money, whose profits

  were numbers not visionaries

 

   Life as a low thing

   worshippers of mines not Minds

   War Lovers not Peace Makers

 

    Aint instead of Art

    (Death instead of Life)

            Dog they best friend

           Ice & Snow

             Not We & Know

             Blood Suckers &

                                 Mother Fuckers

    

     Love War

     so much 

     call the history

     of their civilization

 

     The Cannon!

 

          in honor of Marco Polo’s

              trip to China

 

Should we praise them

    for Dachau, for the poisoning

       of David Walker

       the Genocide of Native

           Americans

    or concentration camps

        for Japanese

              Americans

 

Perhaps 700 years of Irish Colonialism

       or Ghandi’s

          murder

       The Conquest of India

       The Opium Wars

       TB sheets for

       Indians

  or the trail of Tears

 

So how should we praise them?

And what should we call them?

           Who style themselves God

           Whose New World Order

           Seems old & Miltonian in that they rule

           & do not serve

 

But somehow the term Satan seems too narrow

     The word Devil is too limiting

 

But there must be some description, some appropriate

horrific

      we can coin–

 

       Something that says liar, murderer, maniac, animal

       something that indicates their importance.

 

Related Links

Interactive Program Day I

Collection Highlights

Timeline: History, Witness, and the Struggle for Freedom in African American Poetry

Language, Music, and the Vernacular in African American Poetry