Amiri Baraka

The modern poetry world lost one of its most divisive and beloved yesterday as Amiri Baraka died at the age of 79. Known as the father of the Black Arts movement, Baraka was a controversial figure who helped birth the Black Art movement of the late 1960’s and 70’s. Educated at Howard University, drummed out of the Air Force in 1954 for his communist leanings, Baraka went on to publish Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at his Totem Publishing house in the Greenwich Village.

As a publisher, poet, and jazz critic, he was a leading figure in the Beat Generation. His works were widely read in the traditionally high brow, New York literary world as the equal of Kerouac and Ginsberg. After the assignation of Malcolm X, Baraka moved quickly away from the Beat poetry that he was publishing at Totem into the growing Black Nationalism movement. There he firmly embedded himself as its poet laureate. Many of his poems centered on urban life in Harlem during the 1960’s and 70’s focusing on the growing frustrations of African Americans. It was during this period that some of his most controversial poems were published



In 1965, his poem “Black Art”, Baraka casts the "negro-leader," the "Liberal," the "jew-lady," or the Eliotic "owner-jews" as the enemies, but his supporters defend the work as an avant-garde piece aimed at pushing the boundaries of American perceptions of the black man. Set in the backdrop of a period when armed self-defense and slogans such as "Arm yourself or harm yourself' were popular, the poem established a social climate that promoted confrontation with the white power structure, especially “ pigs” or police officers. Following such credos, Baraka had in fact been arrested and convicted (later overturned on appeal) on a gun possession charge during the 1967 Newark Riots. Baraka said of his work at this time his poems must be “poems that kill" the enemies of a black man. While drawing serious controversy, Baraka defended the statement as a metaphor for killing the stereotypes set on the black community. Many scholars see such lines as Baraka ridding himself of his own past.

Whether loved or reviled, it is hard to ignore the work of Baraka in studying the Black Art Movement, and its role in it. Without a doubt, Amiri Baraka will be placed along with the likes of Kerouac for his early work in the Beat Poetry movement, and Langston Hughes, and Sterling Brown on the list of great black poets.