Amiri Baraka

[queerbychoice]

onemeatball just made me aware that Imamu Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, who you more than likely read a few poems by in your high school English classes (under one or the other of his names), wrote a poem in October 2001 called "Somebody Blew Up America," angrily criticizing the U.S. government for issues surrounding September 11th. Eventually, government officials got wind of the fact that he'd dared to criticize them, and as a result, they demanded that he apologize and resign his title of New Jersey Poet Laureate. He exceptionally eloquently refused (after which, according to the link just supplied to me by bpt, the governor responded by abolishing the position of New Jersey Poet Laureate from existence entirely). I highly recommend reading both the poem and his defense of it.

Comments

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

*steals shamelessly*

[bpt.livejournal.com]

Superb poem, but this is old news. They aren't "now demanding" that he apologize and resign; apparently, when Baraka refused to resign, the governor abolished the poet laureateship.

(see: Baraka Sues NJ Governor: Renowned Poet Seeks Reinstatement as NJ Poet Laureate also: Wikipedia article))

video of Baraka reading the poem (Realplayer format, sorry, haven't found video or audio in a nonproprietary format yet)

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Ah, thank you for the update! And how fitting that the governor revealed his opposition to the arts by abolishing the very idea of his state even having a poet laureate at all.