ANALYSIS OF SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA
BY AMIRI BARAKA
Background
It was 1956 when Allen Ginsberg was arrested on the charge of obscenity in poetry for his famous
poem "Howl". The poem became a landmark not only in the history of America, but to the rest of
the world that finally dared to defy the prevalent morality of a society. In the same way, Amiri
Baraka – a celebrated and controversial writer from America – stirred the world when he read his
poem "Somebody blew up America". The poem went viral and was received by people with
mixed reactions. Some saluted the protest towards the country of his citizenship, while others
condemned the poem as an expression of racism, homophobia and violence.We have tried to
provide an Analysis of Somebody blew up America by Amiri Baraka.
Structure
This is a free verse poem. It has no set structure, but maintains its rhythmic elements for oral
sharing. This is in the form of traditional Beat poetry, which is the forefather of rap/hip-hop music.
It is meant to be shared orally, with the story teller able to emphasize and share lines specifically
for an audience. It was originally shared by the author in the manner.
Poem Analysis
The author starts out by indicting that no one is blaming "terrorists" that are usually attributed
with his country. He indicates groups that are racist or exploitive, and actually lists names of
prominent figures who have been blamed for racist movements or actions, as well as likely
referencing the Klu Klux Klan multiple times.
They say (who say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Throughout the first section of this poem, Baraka is looking at who is responsible for the problems
in his country today. He references many atrocities of humanity, but focuses specifically on those
levelled against the African-American community. He goes on to point at the historical upper
class of early America – Christian slave owners. This is meant for a community in America who
hurl a bad name and slap fines and punitive measures on the toilers and workers, who destroy
creations with ammunitions and weapons of mass destruction. He goes on to move also blame this
group for international atrocities:
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
In these lines, the author is again referencing historical events he feels are atrocities against
ethnicities. He is also pointing out that the reason these atrocities are seldom talked about or
viewed as such is because this traditional class has control of the media, giving them the power to
limit or modify public perspective.
Baraka has a different definition of who is the terrorist. It is the exploiter who lives on the blood
and sweat of producers, who gets "fat" from plantation surplus, who kills and decides the law,
who pushes down the values and virtues of others.The terrorists are those who make the law, who
make the distinction, who lives on others’ toil and who legislates. Terrorists are those who do not
break the structure, but create the structures, the laws, the conventions, the cities, the rules and
who creates the jails and sermons. Terrorists are those who use their power to terrorise the people
and more, they kill people when they do want to push their values.
These are the same terrorists who rule the world and rape nations like Puerto Rico, Philippines,
and Australia. They introduced opium to Chinese and made them inactive. These are the ones who
spread venereal diseases on to the slave population so that their collective backbone becomes
weak. This mixture of philosophical and physical terrorism is vast, but Baraka ensures that it is
clearly pointed at a small group of specific people.
Who own what ain’t even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain’t the real owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Baraka shifts his focus from tearing on the white traditional upper class of America to a group that
"owns" them, or is paying them for influence within their realm. He insists that this influential
group is behind Bush’s rise to presidency and is anti-democratic. He then makes references to
biblical events who he also blames on this specific group, as well as referencing the Armenian
genocide.
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Theories regarding who authored the attacks on 9/11 abound. Baraka pointed at Israel, indicating
that they knew the incident would take place. However, he also points to the countries civilization
that had already created everything used to destroy their country. The physical reality was simply
waiting to occur.
Theme and Conclusion
Throughout this poem, Baraka is placing blame for current and historical atrocities. The evil of
exploitation is consistently repeated throughout the poem. However, as the poem ends with a
perception that justified violent response will emanate from exploitation, Baraka’s communist
leanings become clear. He mixes these themes of exploitation and justice throughout the poem.
Baraka lists all the misdeeds and destructions in the name of development; he then connects all
exploiters he thinks are and putting them in one category against everyone who produce.
Terrorists are those who rule and exploit, and he claims they had destroyed America well before
9/11 took place.
One Way of Reading 'Somebody Blew Up America'
By Selwyn R. Cudjoe
November 26, 2002
Posted: December 14, 2002
[ On Saturday 22, November 2002, Amiri Baraka, one of America's most
distinguished poets delivered a lecture at Wellesley College. It caused a huge
controversy on the campus because Baraka wrote "Somebody Blew Up
America," a poem that dealt with the disastrous events of September 11, 2002
and his reaction towards it. In this article, Professor Selwyn Cudjoe
contextualizes Baraka's poem and argues for its literariness rather than
reducing it to a mere sociological document ]
Over the past few weeks, Amiri Baraka's poem(s) and his presence on the campus have
caused painful feelings on all sides and generated much controversy. As s a scholar and critic
of African American literature, I would like to offer my contribution to the debate. Whether
we agree or disagree about the "anti-Semitic" nature of "Somebody Blew Up America," it is
important to engage the poem in its own terms and in its literary and cultural contexts. Yet we
must be careful. As is true with so many of these issues, once a black person's work is under
scrutiny, most of us seem to lose our perspective and decide that statements about hate, etc.,
are enough to win the day. Such a posture is not new. In 1963-64, in a celebrated exchange
with Irving Howe, a progressive Jewish intellectual of tremendous imaginative and
intellectual power, Ralph Ellison had cause to ask:
Why is it so often true that when critics confront the American as Negro they
suddenly drop their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of
confident superiority to quite primitive modes of analysis? Why is it that
sociology-oriented critics seem to rate literature so far below politics and
ideology that they would rather kill a novel [or a poem] than modify their
presumptions concerning a given reality which it seeks in its own terms to
project? Finally, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the
meaning of Negro life never bother to learn how varied it really is? (Shadow
and Act, p. 108)
Needless to say, the first two questions are more pertinent to our discussion and raise several
important questions. In the first instance, we must be truthful before any honest dialogue can
take place. No matter how we try to disguise it, the entire controversy around Baraka and
his persona non grata status on this campus arose because he wrote "Somebody Blew up
America." Despite claims to the contrary, prior to October 1, 2002, very few persons on
campus can point to one essay s/he penned protesting the hatred, venom, etc., of Baraka's
work. Therefore, it seems sensible to discuss this work in its own terms and in its literary and
cultural contexts.
Before I discuss this poem, it is important to point out that amidst the sound and fury of this
controversy, Professors Erika Williams and Elena Gascon-Vera sought to remind us that we
were dealing with a poem as a particular form of literary expression. For example, Professor
Williams asserted: "Baraka produces literature-a fact that seems to get lost in the discussion
about his personal views and/or stated rhetoric in such forums as newspapers interviews and
public speeches." In their own ways, Professors Williams and Gascon-Vera sought to nudge
us to an understanding that it was necessary to take on the poem in its own terms before we
arrived at any conclusions about what it had to say. It is important to thank them for their
intervention.
"Somebody Blew Up America" is about 240 lines long. It asks some fundamental questions
about what took place on September 11. It begins with a declaration: "(All thinking
people/oppose terrorism/both domestic/& international.../But one should not/ be used/ To
cover the other.)" That seems plain enough to me. After such a declaration, the poem states:
"Somebody Blew Up America/... They say it's some terrorist, / some barbaric/ A Rab in/
Afghanistan/ It wasn't our American terrorists/ It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads/ Or the
them that blows up nigger/ Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row." As a poet, he can
only answer these questions through the deployment and organization of language to arrive at
a particular stance on the matter. Even more importantly, a poem is meant to be heard rather
than read. But it is significant that before he even says a word about the Jews, he uses
language that resonates in a manner that brings home the pain and suffering that African
Americans and all other oppressed groups have had to undergo at the hands of white
American terrorists.
Beginning with the assertion that somebody blew up America, the poem utilizes a rhetorical
strategy that asks the questions: why and who. Each unit of the poem contributes to the
making of its meaning and reaches its crescendo when it asks the ultimate question: "Who
and Who and Who WHO (+) who who /Whoooo and WhooooooOOOOOOooooOoooo!"
Such urgency, captured at its most intense in Baraka's reading of the poem, suggests that more
than four lines are at stake in this poem. Wrenching four lines from this poem does it a
terrible injustice, no matter how passionate one feels about the sentiments that are expressed.
There are other aids that help us to understand the poem. Although the poet's explication of
his text is not/should not be taken as self-evident truth, anyone who wishes to understand
what Baraka is about in this poem cannot be unmindful of what he says about what he tried to
achieve in his poem. In a statement of October 2, 2002 ("Statement by Amiri Baraka, New
Jersey Poet Laureate: 'I Will Not 'Apologize,' I will not resign"), Baraka offers many clues
about how his poem ought to be read. He says "the poem's underlying theme focuses on how
Black Americans have suffered from domestic terrorism since being kidnapped into US
chattel slavery, e.g., by Slave Owners, US & State Laws, Klan, Skin Heads, Domestic Nazis,
Lynching, denial of rights, national oppression, racism, character assassination, historically,
and at this very minute throughout the US. The relevance of this to Bush's call for a 'War on
Terrorism,' is that Black people feel we have always been victims of terror, governmental and
general, so we cannot get as frenzied and hysterical as the people who while asking to dismiss
our history and contemporary reality to join them, in the name of a shallow 'patriotism' in
attacking the majority of people in the world, especially people of color and in the third
world." In my way of seeing, such a goal has nothing to do with the Jews and Sharon per se.
It has to do with an African-American response, if we may, to a very catastrophic moment in
our history.
Again, Baraka is very specific in his intention. He says: "We cannot in good conscience,
celebrate what seems to us an international crusade to set up a military dictatorship over the
world, legitimized at base, by white supremacy, carried out, no matter the crude lies, as the
most terrifying form of imperialism and its attendant national oppression. All of it designed to
drain super profits bluntly from the colored peoples of the world, but as well, from the
majority peoples of the world.!" Then he makes an important statement: "For all the frantic
condemnations of Terror by Bush & co, as the single International Super Power, they are the
most dangerous terrorists in the world!' There are many persons who would not/do not want
to believe this, but some of us see Bush's terrorist campaign as a way to scuttle many of our
civil liberties and the war directed against Iraq as a very dangerous undertaking."
This is Baraka's focus. Like it or not, this is where he wants to go. He is concerned about
oppressed people all over the world, even the Jews who suffered during the Holocaust, hence
his question (constant questioning): "Who put the Jews in ovens,/ and who helped them do it,/
Who said 'America First"/ and ok'd the yellow stars." As Baraka explains, the latter is "a
reference to America's domestic fascists just before World War @ and the Nazi Holocaust."
Baraka also went out of his way to mention the names of Jews all over the world that were
"oppressed, murdered by actual Anti-Semitic forces, open or disguised." The poem asks:
"Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt/Who murdered the Rosenbergs/ All the good
people iced, tortured, assassinated, vanished." At its best, the poem acknowledges Jewish
suffering and pain and attempts to speak for all of those groups (and persons) who have been
oppressed by racist, terrorist and fascist forces that become rich in the process. He says that
he is a communist. Therefore, it seems reasonable that in the penultimate lines of the poem he
would ask:
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and
National oppression and Terror
Violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever Seen God?
But everybody seen The Devil.
These are powerful lines. Baraka means to be provocative. We may not "like" what he says,
but he believes he has an important literary statement to make and he demands that we
respond to his words.
What, then, are the offending lines?
Who knew the World Trade center was gonna get Bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
And again the question:
Who? Who? Who/
In his reading, Baraka was careful to distinguish between Israeli citizens and American Jews.
He insists that he was not saying that "Israel was responsible for the Attack, but that they
knew and our counterfeit President did too!" Now, Baraka can certainly be taken to task for
this statement, but he has offered his evidence for such a conclusion. He says, even the
Democratic Party asserted that the administration knew much more than they told the public
and called for an investigation into same. As recently as November 22, the New York
Times questioned how much the CIA and FBI knew about the Saudi Arabia connection to the
events of September 11. But Baraka goes further. He argued that "Michael Ruppert of the
Green Party has issued a video stating clearly, 'Israeli security issued urgent warnings to the
CIA of large-scale terror attacks...And that the Israeli Mossad knew the attacks were going to
take place...they knew the World Trade Center were targets. This is from the British
newspaper The Telegraph." Speaking of the day in question, the British Telegraph of
September 16, 2001 had this to say:
In the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the 69-year-old Defense Secretary, was
beginning a working breakfast with a few Congress members to discuss
missile defense. Stony-faced, Rumsfeld voiced his long-held opinion that the
US would face another terrorist attack in the near future. "Let me tell ya," he
drawled, "I've been around the block a few times. There will be another
event."
It was hardly the first warning: last month, Israeli intelligence officials had
warned their US counterparts that a large-scale terrorist attack on key targets
on the American mainland was imminent. Two senior military intelligence
experts had been sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI that
a cell of 200 terrorists was preparing a major operation.
Given our understanding of things as it were then, no one can say with any degree of
specificity that the CIA or the FBI knew the terrorists would pounce on the targets on which
they did. But Baraka speaks from a particular site and from a specific point of view.
Baraka is more specific about the second of the four offending lines. In trying to confirm what
the US knew, when it knew it, etc., Baraka insists that "Israeli security force, SHABAK knew
about the attack in advance. My sources were 'Ha'aret" and 'Yadiot Ahranot" (two Israeli
newspapers) 'Al Watan' (a Jordania newspaper), 'Manar-TV and the websites of the Israeli
security force SHABAK. There are myriad references to this in Reuters, Der Spiegel. The
Israeli newspaper Yadiot Ahranot 1st revealed SHABAK had cancelled Sharon's appearance
in New York City that day, Sept 11, where he was supposed to speak at an "Israeli Day"
celebration. This was also mentioned in the Star Ledger to the effect Sharon was supposed to
visit the US, but no dates were mentioned. It is the Green Party's Ruppert who makes the
most effective case for the 4000 Israeli workers (Not Jewish Workers!) but Israeli nationals.
He says in his video, 'if what I am showing you is known overtly all through the media, how
much more does our thirty billion dollar intelligence community know'. . . 'Nonsense' to say
the Israeli did it. They were warning the US hands over fist. . . We reviewed the list of former
tenants of the World Trade Center at the on-line Wall St., Journal site. And there's the website.
It is an alphabetical list of tenants. Scrool to the very bottom and notice the moving date for
the office of Zim American-Israeli Shipping to Norfolk Virginia. They were all in the World
Trade Center. They must have had Mossad' or (Shabak-AB) input because they vacated one
week before September and they broke their lease. The Israelis didn't pull the attack, but they
were smart enough to get their people out of the way."
I must confess that I checked neither the video nor the Israeli newspapers that Baraka cites.
Yet, to assert that the poem contains "a demonstrable falsehood" (as the English Department
contends) seems to be wrong-headed. Baraka's conclusion may be right or it may be wrong.
He certainly is not a madman-and mad men do have their own truths-- proclaiming his truths
without a smattering of evidence. As an artist, Baraka is using his poem to disturb, to ask us
to questions what took place on September 11 and why. Speaking of five Israelis who were
laughing while they were filing the debacle (and this is tough to believe), Baraka says: "This
is why the poem. . . throughout continuously chants the question WHO WHO WHO? That is,
who is responsible for this horrible crime and WHY? It is a poem that aims to probe and
disturb, but there is not the slightest evidence of Anti-Semitism, as anyone who reads it
without some insidious bias would have to agree."
However one takes Baraka's declaration, the crude sociological modes that Ellison
condemned has to come to terms with other semiological modes of literary analysis in which
the status of language within the novel or the poem are of enormous importance. Semioticians
(particularly someone such as Saussure) reminded us that there is a distinction between the
sound image (the signifier) and the concept (the signified) as he tried to move us away from
the notion that there is some "real world" out there which we refer to in words. They also
warn us that the "real world" we articulate through signs may not be the same (that is, may
not mean the same thing ) for/to all of us. Even Michel Foucault who violently objected to
being called a structuralist by "certain half-witted 'commentators'" (Foreword to the English
edition of The Order of Things), responded to Eduardo Sanguinetti's appeal to realism with
the following quip: "Reality does not exist...Language is all there is, and what we are talking
about is language, we speak within language" (David Macey, The Many Lives of Michel
Foucault, p. 150). Suffice it to say, that when we examine a poem we must always be
concerned to relate systems of signs to meaning.
Even within the African-American tradition of literary criticism, an "epistemological break,"
to use the language of Louis Althusser (Lenin and Philosophy), occurred when Henry Louis
Gates (The Signifying Monkey [1988]) made a stunning advancement over Addison Gayle's
work (The Way of the New World [1975]) when he argued that even an analysis of African
American literature had to yield to a more sophisticated understanding of how language
functions in the making of any verbal work. Incidentally, this is one reason (apart from the
work that Alice Walker did) why Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) was elevated within
the African American canon at the expense of Richard Wright's Native Son (1940). Even
within the African-American critical tradition of literature (and we have a way of looking at
the world) crude sociological modes of analysis must give way to modes that seek to
understand how language functions within the poem.
It is these varied readings of cultural signs that have led to such disparate explications of
Baraka's poem. This is what Professors Gason-Vera and Williams have pointed out.
Gason-Vera pleads: "My defense is literature. Poems are poems, and for literature people, like
me, if they are good, they are sacred. I have not read [David] Duke, actually, if I remember
well he is popular racist who wanted to be Governor of Louisiana, isn't it he. I will probable
hate the man. However, if Duke will write a poem denouncing injustices and suffering of his
people and will do it with a strong poem, with strong metaphors that could be analyses in a
literary, political, and historical context, I would love to teach it."
Williams offers the following: "[In 'Somebody Blew Up America,'] there are plenty of
references to hot-button political and historical issues ('Who got fat from plantations/Who
genocide Indians/ Tried to waste the Black nation'). But there are no imputations to blame any
one group for the various social tragedies Baraka is railing against-in fact, he is liberal in his
suggestion that quite a few people including key African-American members of the Bush
administration might be called into question for their political beliefs or politics. Questioning
is in fact the dominant rhetorical strategy in Baraka's poem ('Who is them paying/Who telling
lies, etc.,') I suppose that my real questions are: how do we go about anchoring claims that
someone's art per se is responsible for promoting-racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. beliefs?"
We must always examine how language is used in a particular work of art. After D. H.
Lawrence published Lady Chatterley's Lover, it was condemned for its "phallic reality" and
"indescribable depravity." When the novel arrived in the United States copies were
confiscated by the US customs on grounds that such "vile" and "vulgar" language would
subvert the morals of the community. As Professor Williams asks in the specific context of
"Somebody Blew Up America": "How do we read Joseph Conrad's portrayal of soulless,
savage 'niggers' in Conrad's Heart of Darkness? How do we respond to Allen Ginsberg's 'a
vision of ultimate cunt and come?" (from 'Howl')?" After being excoriated by the press,
Lawrence exclaimed "Nobody likes being called a cesspool" (Lady Chatterley's Lover: A
Propos of 'Lady Chatterley Lover," xxxii) One could not help but hear similar resonances in
Baraka's outburst: "I am not an Anti-Semite. No one likes being slandered. Your slander will
be with me for the rest of my life!" (Lecture, November 22).
We may or may not like "Somebody Blew Up America." Yet, we cannot reduce the poem to a
crude sociological document. It requires a special kind of expertise and discipline to
understand it. This does not mean that we have to like it. Many may find it disturbing, but
then that is the author's purpose. Many may find it offensive or worse, that, too, is a
conclusion we must also respect. Yet, as scholars and teachers, we have a special obligation
to our colleagues, our students and our college, to act as educated men and women to whom
rationality and analysis are of primary importance. We do our community little good if we do
not ask our students to look at this (and other texts) seriously, carefully and knowledgeable.
These are indispensable criteria for ferreting out the truth of any literary act.
Baraka's work has enriched the lives of many persons throughout the world. As he displayed
over the last month, the thrust of his work is meant to disturb our peaceful acceptance of the
terrors and evils of this world. Unless Wellesley is different from other parts of the world,
Baraka's work will continue to do for Wellesley what it has done for the rest of the world.
Twenty years from now, Baraka's truth, as Whitman's truth, and as Poe's truth, will have more
valence than anything his critics have said here over the past few weeks. The truth of Baraka's
work, warts and all, will live on as long as we respect the power of the word and the lucidity
with which it captures the struggles of all oppressed people all over the world.
Amiri Baraka - "Somebody Blew Up America"
That there is even any controversy over building a Muslim community center in Lower
Manhattan (the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque") makes me wonder: do we Americans
know the depth of our hypocrisy? Or do we really forget the past that quickly? Amiri
Baraka, the legendary poet and activist, knows his history, and isn't afraid to remind us
in his piece, "Someone Blew Up America." The controversial poem, written in the
weeks following the 9/11 attacks, became the focus of battle royal in which the
governor of New Jersey demanded Baraka's resignation as the state’s Poet Laureate.
Baraka refused, and when the governor had no legal ability to fire him, the state
legislature passed a bill in 2003 eliminating the poet laureate position all together.
Freedom of speech in New Jersey then, freedom of religion in New York now. God
bless America.
Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Controversial And Achingly Beautiful
One of America's most important — and controversial — literary
figures, Amiri Baraka, died on Thursday from complications
after surgery following a long illness, according to his oldest son.
Baraka was 79.
Baraka co-founded the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. His
literary legacy is as complicated as the times he lived through,
from his childhood — where he recalled not being allowed to
enter a segregated library — to the 2001 attack on the World
Trade Center. His poem about that attack, "Somebody Blew Up
America," quickly became infamous.
They say its some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan ...
In that poem, Baraka hurls indictments at forces of oppression
throughout history:
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
The poem is a furious blaze of references, from the invasion of
Grenada to the Jewish Holocaust, and conspiracies ranging from
who shot Malcolm X to who killed Princess Di. Then, critics
said, Amiri Baraka took it way too far:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
The poem had immediate consequences. Baraka was reviled
even by former fans, and his post as the official state poet
laureate of New Jersey was dissolved. A few years later, the
host of the NPR show News and Notes pressed him about the
incident, asking if he had any regrets.
Amiri Baraka wrote the poem Somebody Blew Up America about the September 11th
Attacks. The poem was explicit in its condemnation of US foreign policy which Baraka
felt created a climate of terrorism.
In response, the Governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey tried to remove Baraka from
his post as Poet Laureate of New Jersey. As there was no legal way to remove him,
legislation was introduced in the State Senate to abolish the post. This was signed into
law by Governor McGreevey, and on July 2, 2003, Baraka ceased being the poet
laureate. He in turn sued McGreevy and in response, the United States Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit ruled that state officials were immune from such suits.
In November 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal of
the case.
SOMEBODY BLEW UP AMERICA: A CONVERSATION WITH AMIRI
BARAKA
Amiri Baraka is Beat.
He walked away from the scene in Greenwich Village, where he edited literary journals Yugen,
Kulchur, and The Floating Bear from 1958-65. Working with Hettie Cohen, Michael John Fles,
and Diane Di Prima, respectively, the journals brought new works by new names. Featured
writers included Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Phillip
Whalen, and Michael McClure. He co-founded Totem Press and was influential in the
launching of Corinth Books. Yugen magazine was perhaps most significant as the platform for
the “new” Beat writers, allowing their work to find a place in one of the first venues to give
credulity to the movement.
A wise and controversially outspoken man, his views have kept him on the Outside, the Beat
side. The U.S. Air Force discharged him after two years of service due to his belief in
communism. In 1961 he was arrested for distributing obscenity after mailing copies of The
Floating Bear, Issue Nine, to subscribers; and his presence at the 1967 riots in Newark, New
Jersey, saw him arrested and severely beaten by police. It was also the year he changed his
name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka. The charges against him were eventually dropped and
much of his support came from the Beat community.
From Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, his first book of poems in 1961, to his
upcoming play, The Most Dangerous Man in America, he has stayed the course, worked and
fought for his beliefs of an equitable society.
With the death of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., (who visited Baraka’s Newark home a
week before his murder), he left the mostly-white Bohemian literary scene and the environs of
the East Village to take up a more radical stance towards Black Nationalism. But despite his
distancing himself from the Beats in the mid-sixties, Baraka read poetry and attended panel
discussions at Beat-haven Naropa Institute through the 1980-90s, and remained friends with
Ginsberg until Allen’s death in 1997.
More recently his poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” brought an end to his New Jersey
“Poet Laureate” post when Governor Jim McGreevey took umbrage to the poem’s questioning
of the events surrounding the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centers. The “Who?’ of the
exploding owl in the poem echoes the angst of Ginsberg’s voice in “Howl.” Having heard
Ginsberg recite live from ten feet away, this writer finds both poems equally as exciting and
important.
Baraka has been called “the triple-threat Beat.” His talent has brought him recognition and
awards not just in poetry and prose but also in theater as an Obie Award winning playwright. A
sampling of awards bestowed upon him include the PEN Open Book Award, the Langston
Hughes Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, and National Endowment for
the Arts and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. Maybe one of the most bittersweet titles
placed on him is that of the Poet Laureate of Newark Public Schools, which he received after
Gov. McGreevey’s actions against him
Additionally, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and regarded as a
respected academic, having taught at the state universities of New York at Stony Brook and
Buffalo, Columbia University, and other institutions.
We started by asking why he walked away from the Beat Movement, which gave him a vehicle
to establish himself as writer/thinker/activist to a wider audience.
~
Well, that whole thing [the Beat Movement], was very explosive, but remember that the whole
Civil Rights Movement was intensifying. I got out of the service in 1957. The Montgomery bus
boycott had gone on a couple years before. After they had successfully made them integrate
those buses, they blew up Doctor King’s house. At that point, it really began to be clear this was
the kind of struggle that was going on particularly in the south, at least for me, having been in
the service for two years.
That was the point that it became clear… until they blew up King’s house and he says… you
know, the black people showed up at his house with their rifles and said, “What should we do,
what should we do, Doctor King?” and he said, “If any blood be shed, let it be ours.” So my
whole generation reacted negatively to that and said, “No, it won’t be like that. If people are
going to be shooting, they are going to be shooting back and forth.”
Malcolm X appeared at that scene with his whole idea about, you know, “You treat people like
they treat you. They treat you with respect, you treat them with respect. They put their hands on
you, send them to the cemetery.”
So a whole generation of black youth responded to that positively as a sign that Doctor King
was indeed a normal man instead of some kind of a saintly non-violent kind of perseverant.
During that period, the next years of 1958-1960… In 1959, Fidel Castro led that revolution in
Cuba so I went down there the next year, 1960, to Cuba and met Fidel, Ché Guevara, and all
those people. I also met the black activist from North Carolina, Robert Williams, who was in
exile in Cuba because he had really been practicing a kind of a self-defense in North Carolina, a
thing that actually ended up with him stopping the [Ku Klux] Klan – removing their hoods…
and then he found out it was the State Police! Then they framed him for kidnapping a white
couple and he went to Cuba to escape that kind of injustice, so I met him.
Anyway, that was the point – 1960 – when, while I had this kind of awareness of the Civil
Rights Movement, I actually became much more directly involved in it. So, about 1965, when
Malcolm X was murdered, I felt the best thing to do would be to get out of the Village and move
to Harlem. I found that, for a lot of black people, that event made us take stock of ourselves and
move out of Greenwich Village into Harlem. That was actually the point. I began the Black Arts
Repertory Theater Company in 1965 at 130th Street and Lenox Avenue.
Who else was involved in the theater?
Larry Neal, poet, and Askia Touré, poet, those were two of the leading figures. Many people
came to Harlem who were not already in Harlem, because they were attracted to the Black Arts
Repertory School that we opened. We would send out trucks into the neighborhood every
day… four trucks, one had graphic arts, the other had poetry, the other had music and the other
had drama. We did this every day throughout the summer of 1965 so that created a kind of
militant venue for Black Arts. They found that was desirable rather than having to submit to the
continued racism of Greenwich Village.
The perception is that the Village was not so racist.
At that particular point, a lot of young black people felt it was better to move to Harlem to take
an active kind of fighting stance against it, rather than to be isolated in Greenwich Village.
Taking action was better than writing about it or publishing work about it?
Right, absolutely… it was not only about the publishing; it was about actually being an activist
in that community and on the street and actually making Black Arts relevant to the movement
rather than simply commenting on it.
Do you feel that we are losing ground and giving back too much of what was gained then?
Absolutely! It is like one step forward, two steps back. The whole Obama campaign, the
victory… on one hand has brought a kind of very sharp reaction. It is like after the Civil War –
once the slaves were so-called “emancipated,” that’s when you get the Ku Klux Klan and the
black “coons” and all of that strict re-segregation. Rather than ending slavery you got the whole
segregation of the south and the whole dividing of the south into black and white even though
they were theoretically free from slavery… but slaves were plunged into sharecropping and
many times they couldn’t go anywhere. The white people in the south wouldn’t let them go
until years after slavery was over. They started going north and west. You can read about that in
a book called The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. She charts that whole
immigration out of the south by my people.
The Obama Administration… since the first election, racism feels more prevalent.
It’s a stirring reaction to that election. Now we have the Tea Party. The Tea Party is
correspondent to the Klan. They appear… the whole takeover of the Congress and the House of
Representatives certainly existed because of these kinds of racist incidents – whether Trayvon
Martin in the South [Martin was shot in February 2012] or shooting Amadou Diallo in the
Bronx [police in February 1999] or the various kinds of murders out in California. It’s a sharp
reaction and it shows the reaction is not just against black people but even young white people,
like those taken up with the whole Occupy Movement across the country. There is just
widespread dissatisfaction in society as it is.
How do you feel about the Occupy Movement?
I think it’s a good idea. It is uncertain and uneven but still a good idea and many times there are
too many people completely lacking in the experience, in social struggle, or just anarchism,
walking around who believe in no kind of government and no kind of organized response but
certainly who are opposed to blacks in politics and it is a very ragged kind of result that comes
out of that – but still the idea is a good idea and whatever kind of result you can get from that,
even though it’s going to be much less than it would be if it were organized, you still have to
support it.
Part of the reason is that it’s like the Sisyphus Syndrome. The only thing that’s happening now
is that, between the Republican force pushing to the right, to restore the kind of Republican rule
to go to back to Bush, which had been more extreme – what is underneath this is an attempt to
erect a kind of corporate dictatorship. Coming out of all these Republicans’ mouths, especially
the Tea Party, is the whole question that government is too big, that government is the enemy.
The enemy is the lack of development. The fact that poverty still poxes this country and the
development is, so far, uneven without a gap between the little six-tenths of one percent of the
wealthy and the rest of the people. This has grown bigger and, actually, since Roosevelt and the
New Deal we were talking about closing that gap. We talked about creating a much more
equitable society. Now even the middle class is feeling the kind of strains that the working class
is feeling. So the only thing the republicans have done…I mean, look at the surplus that Clinton
had, billions of dollars in surplus, George Bush got rid of it…in the couple of terms that Bush
had, he got rid of it a couple of times. He got rid of it.
How? The war, certainly… 9/11 was, to me, just a door opening to exploit the Middle East.
Like the 2.9 trillion dollars that Rumsfeld announced was missing on the day before 9/11? He
claimed they didn’t know what they did with it…
Right! They didn’t know what they did with it… the people who got it know what they did with
it… (laughs).
Can any government be righteous?
I’m a communist. I’m a Marxist. I believe that, ultimately, people will become sophisticated
enough to understand that they themselves must rule – not just some little, small elitist group of
exploiters. That is what the struggle is for – to see if this society itself becomes equitable. It is
going to be hard because we are going to have to go through this period of intensified corporate
domination, this last ditch struggle and the fact that it is now a global economy. You see that the
struggles on Wall Street have affected the whole world and the only way that they feel they can
gain any kind of superiority is war. That’s when they can hire more workers. That’s when they
can fill their coffers and that’s exactly what they want to do… war… and that’s the only way
capitalism can remain balanced on two feet, so to speak, but it will never be secure. That’s the
problem that the people of the world face, that they have to finally overthrow these
governments. They have to overthrow the monopoly of capitalism. That’s the task that faces
humanity if it is ever to be truly civilized. You can’t be civilized with capitalism. It is too elitist.
Most people are up against it. Most people cannot ever get a real education. Most of us still live
in slums. It is something that is destined to be destroyed that will be very difficult to destroy it
in its last days.
Speaking of last days, what do you think of the FEMA camps and the things like the Georgia
law that is in Congress to bring back the guillotine?
Are you serious about the guillotine?
Yes, it is a bill in legislature. They say they are running out of the drug to kill people with. You
also have the Social Security Administration buying thousands of rounds of ammunition lately
and you have to wonder what they need that for.
That’s the penalty for moving towards a corporate dictatorship because these people, the
republicans and the Tea Party and these people, they’re not talking about the government.
They’re talking about the government. They are talking about straight-out rule by the rich. It
may be a terrifying scenario but that is what is in the works unless the people can find the
wherewithal, the understanding, and the organization to resist it.
Even in its ragged state, I would rather have the Occupiers than nothing at all. The problem is
that, too often, the people in power are opposed to the Occupiers. That’s the problem, most of
the people who are in these posts, these small bureaucratic posts, they are even acting against
their own interests, not to mention the police and those who are charged with keeping the order
– an order that does not even serve them! It’s a tragic situation. But I don’t know what Social
Security would be doing with all those guns. I don’t know that.
“Somebody Blew Up America.” You were censored by the New Jersey governor for publishing
and performing this poem. The media depicts others who have questioned the events of 9/11 as
crazy.
I understand it, yeah. That’s it. You got it. All you have to do is open your mouth, like they say
you’ve got freedom of speech – as long as you don’t say anything. The minute you open your
mouth, then that’s the end of that. Then they attack you. It has certainly happened to me. It
happens to all kinds of people… even somebody like Bruce Springsteen, when he first sang that
song about “fighting the yellow man for the white man.” They silenced him for a few years but
he managed to come back. It’s that way, if you talk to say anything. There is a long history of
that, particularly (for) Afro-Americans, but everybody else, too.
Like that attack on the film industry in the fifties, to remove any taint of the Left from the film
industry, the blacklisting of the whole film industry. The whole McCarthyism thing and the fact
that, during World War Two, the United States’ closest allies were Russia and China, but after
World War Two our closest allies were suddenly the same people we were fighting, Germany
and Japan… figure that out! Then China and Russia became our worst enemies. Why is that?
It’s because they wanted to cut loose any kind of sign of supporting socialism. Since China and
Russia were socialist countries our struggle with these socialist countries, then, was to make
sure they were opposed to that (socialism). Finally, Russia succumbed and China has been
riddled with imperialist advance. Finally, this corporate America is what dominates and wants
to make sure that monopoly capitalism and imperialism outlast anything.
Why do you think people do not pay more attention to this?
The people who could make the most noise about it are afraid they are going to lose their
whatever, their positions, afraid they are going to lose what they have. The problem with the
great majority of people is that they are not organized and sometimes they don’t have the facts
so they don’t know what is going on. It happens too often, even if you elect good people… like
in Newark back in 1970, the first black mayor, the second black mayor. We haven’t had a white
mayor in Newark since 1970… but then we get somebody like Cory Booker, the present mayor,
who actually is sent here by corporate ventures to turn the whole advance, the drive to some
kind of equitable city government, around. Now we are struggling against that. Now we have a
situation where the mayor is trying to sell our water to private interests. It’s unbelievable. He is
trying to sell the water plus about two thousand acres of land where we have the water.
Water is getting more expensive, like oil.
That’s what they want to do – jack the prices up and so this is an ongoing struggle. The largest
corporation in Newark, which is Prudential Insurance, the largest insurance company in the
world, they haven’t paid any taxes since 1970. One of their buildings is worth 300 million
dollars a year in taxes. They were given a tax abatement in 1970. That was the “white-mail”
they put on the new black city government, “Either give us a tax abatement or we are leaving.”
That is not supposed to be eternal. I mean, you could give them a thirty-year abatement and it
still would be over by 2000. We still have twelve years of twelve times 300 million dollars a
year, we wouldn’t have a deficit… but they refuse to pay their taxes. They built an arena. They
have the NCAA [basketball]; they have the Devils hockey team, which is an interesting idea for
Newark. When they have all kinds of big events, they say we owe them money. They utilize our
water. They utilize our police for security. We have to pay the police overtime any time they
have an event and they say owe money.
Funny how all the venues are named after financial institutions these days, as opposed to
names of great people.
That’s right. That’s just an indication of where everything is going. Everything is named after a
bank or some other kind of corporation… even baseball stadiums. That’s absurd. Here
everything is named after Prudential. (laughs)
Which medium do you find most useful in reaching people and motivating them?
The problem, again, is the control by the organizations. In the sixties, for instance, the whole
emergence of abstraction and the corporations first fought against abstraction. That is the
problem with the arts… it is like “freedom of the press”. You can have freedom of the press if
you own a press otherwise you have to deal with a mimeograph machines and small distribution.
That’s the way it is with all of the arts. That is the theater of grants. Somebody has to bestow
that support upon the artist. Unless you really qualify, philosophically, to be in those venues,
you are not going to be there.
I produced a play back in the sixties when I was perhaps unclear what I wanted to say, though
they could deal with that to a limited degree. Back then it made it very, very difficult for me to
get anything onstage. I have a play coming out in the spring about [W.E.B.] Dubois, called The
Most Dangerous Man in America. That’s what the FBI called him. It’ll be a month run at a
small theater on the Lower East Side.
You are accomplished and awarded in so many art forms… if you were to be remembered by
one piece of work, what would you choose it to be?
I think the book on black music, Blues People, that I wrote… people still quote that and cite that.
I think that is the most important one. People came out in 1963 and is the book of mine that is
the most constantly-referenced. I think it was the most popular. I have had other works which
had a great deal of (laughs) in the United States.
It’s about African-American music from Africa and how it developed in the United States. The
seeds of that book came to me in a class I had with a man named Sterling Brown, a great poet
who was my English teacher at Howard University. A friend of mine named A.B. Spellman
who is also in the book, and who wrote a book called Four Lives in the Bebop Business, we had
both finished class and he invited us to his house because we had some pretensions of knowing
about the music. Once we were there, he showed us. He had this library with music, by genre,
chronologically, by artist, and he told me, “That’s your history.”
In that kind of capsule statement what he was saying was that if you analyze the music, if you
follow the music, you’ll also find out about the peoples’ history. So that’s what I did – tried to
show how when the music changed it signified change in the status of the people and their
condition. Everything about their lives has undergone some important change and the music is
a result of the affect of the change. It goes to the earliest kind of music – the slave song, the
early blues, the city blues, you know, the kinds of variations on that… like coming into the
north and how it affected the music. It covers up to the 1960s.
You collaborated with The Roots about ten years ago… in hip-hop. Who are the most important
artists or have been?
It changed a great deal from the early hip-hop of the 1970s, which was just a field called “rap.”
Hip-hop is actually a kind of a category that includes different aspects of it all… the DJ, the
rapping, graffiti, break dance. Rap, particularly, changed a great deal from the 1970s. The early
rappers were much more conscious of making a social statement of protesting the kind of
conditions they lived in and that black people lived in. It was really a kind of urban journal type
thing, like Afrika Bambaataa from the South Bronx. Then, later on, people like Kurtis Blow and
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
RunDMC was a period of development of that was put together by the guy (named) Russell
Simmons, who then became rap’s biggest entrepreneur.
Do you think people like Russell Simmons can be as well-accepted and still keep an edge?
People have to sort that out themselves and find out how those kinds of ties (either) support
what they are doing or obstruct it. They might just change what they are doing or what they
thought and come out with something that may not be as important as what they were doing
before. It depends on how you deal with relationships with those institutions and organizations.
Can you tell more about your new play?
The play is about W.E.B. DuBois, when he was about 83 years old and was taking a very
activist position against nuclear weapons and everything, including going to conferences in
Europe to protest nuclear weapons. He was indicted as an “agent of foreign power,” being a
“father” of books. He had just run for political office, he and a man named Vito Marcantonio, a
lawyer who was really the last Italian communist in the U.S. Congress. Anyway, when DuBois
was indicted because he was in a peace organization [he was chairman of the Peace
Information Center, formed in 1950], they had the trial in Washington, DC, and Marcantonio
defended him. He was the lawyer.
It was a drawn out trial but finally he won the case because it turned out that the chief witness
against him was, in fact, the man who had invited DuBois to join the peace organization. So the
thing was overthrown but DuBois was prescient enough to understand it. that he said, “Now the
little children will no longer see my name.”
After that they took his passport and tried to keep him from traveling. Then in 1958, the
Supreme Court overthrew that ruling and gave him back is passport so he was able to travel
throughout the world… Europe, Russia, China. He had been invited to edit Encyclopedia
Africana by Kwame Nkruman, who was the newly-elected Prime Minster of Ghana. He went
there, declared his membership in the Communist Party and he died in Ghana on the day before
the March on Washington, which was started by Reverend Martin Luther King, so it’s a real
cycle.
That covers a lot of territory.
It is going to be mainly the drama of just before the indictment… and how they prepared for this
trial. The main part of the play is the trial itself, and the rest focuses on his travels around the
world, particularly Russia, China, and Ghana. That should be out in spring of next year.
Did you have a personal relationship with Malcolm X?
I met Malcolm one time, after he had his house in Long Island firebombed and he was moving
around Manhattan. I saw him, actually, with a man named Mohamed Babu at the Waldorf
Astoria, where Babu had a room. We met into the wee hours of the morning. That was the only
time I actually talked to Malcolm.
You and Lenny Bruce were often mentioned in the same news stories and seem to have been
crucified at the same time.
I didn’t know him. Like I said if you speak out and identify with any kind of activism you are
going to get jumped. That’s it – and you can’t expect any other thing to happen.
Did you like his act? Were his racial routines funny to a black person?
Sure, at the time. What was relevant is that he was trying to be for real, to bring some reality to
America and make a commentary on America and that was the point. Given the content, he was
attacked for profanity and obscenity and all those things.
At that time, I was arrested for sending obscenity through the mail [for] publishing The
Floating Bear. In one of them I had a play of mine in there or a short story… whatever, and an
essay by William Burroughs. [The material deemed obscene consisted of “The Eighth Ditch”
an excerpt from his novel, From the System of Dante’s Hell, and the Burroughs’ poem,
“Roosevelt after Inauguration”].
This stuff that happened to Lenny Bruce was common, given that situation, because that is
when that whole attack was common when you tried to do that – you were met with some kind
of withering charges. I defended myself in court by reading the decision on [James]
Joyce’s Ulysses and certainly that won the decision for me… (laughs).
~
The 1934 Supreme Court decision to lift the ban on Ulysses opened the doors for the publishing
of many literary works besides those published by Baraka. Joyce’s book was used in the
defense of novels Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The works of Amiri
Baraka have, similarly, pushed open doors for new generations of creative minds to pass
through.
Mr. Baraka was open and generous with his time. He still reads poetry in performance and we
encourage you to see him if you ever have a chance. If you want Beatdom, he is more real than
all the recent movies about the “usual suspects.” He is a living literary treasure and his work
should be celebrated by all freedom-loving Americans and World Citizens.
Watch for his new play, The Most Dangerous Man in America, in spring and pick up a few of
his books while you are waiting. He is the real deal and he speaks more sense than any other
public figure that comes to mind.
Salute him and enjoy his work!
Reading "Somebody Blew Up America"
On Saturday 22, November 2002, Amiri Baraka, one of America's most distinguished poets
delivered a lecture at Wellesley College. It caused a huge controversy on the campus because
Baraka wrote "Somebody Blew up America," a poem that dealt with the disastrous events of
September 11, 2002 and his reaction towards it.
Amiri Baraka's poem has caused painful feelings on all sides and generated much controversy.
Whether we agree or disagree about the "anti-Semitic" nature of "Somebody Blew up
America," it is important to engage the poem in its own terms and in its literary and cultural
contexts. Yet we must be careful. As is true with so many of these issues, once a black
person's work is under scrutiny, most of the critics seem to lose their perspective and decide
that statements about hate, etc., are enough to be victorious. Such a position is not new. In
1963-64, in a celebrated exchange with Irving Howe, a progressive Jewish intellectual of
tremendous imaginative and intellectual power, Ralph Ellison had cause to ask:
Why is it so often true that when critics confront the American as Negro they suddenly drop
their advanced critical armament and revert with an air of confident superiority to quite
primitive modes of analysis? Why is it that sociology-oriented critics seem to rate literature so
far below politics and ideology that they would rather kill a novel [or a poem] than modify
their presumptions concerning a given reality which it seeks in its own terms to project?
Finally, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro life never
bother to learn how varied it really is? (Shadow and Act, 108)
Needless to say, the first two questions are more pertinent to the researcher's discussion and
raise several important questions. In the first instance, we must be truthful before any honest
dialogue can take place. No matter how we try to disguise it, the entire controversy around
Baraka and his persona non grata status on this campus arose because he wrote "Somebody
Blew up America." Despite claims to the contrary, prior to October 1, 2002, very few persons
can point to one essay s/he penned protesting the hatred, venom, etc., of Baraka's work.
Therefore, it seems sensible to discuss this work in its own terms and in its literary and
cultural contexts.
Before the present researcher discusses this poem, it is important to point out that amidst
the sound and fury of this controversy, Professors Erika Williams and Elena Gascon-Vera
sought to remind us that we were dealing with a poem as a particular form of literary
expression. For example, Professor Williams asserted: "Baraka produces literature-a fact that
seems to get lost in the discussion about his personal views and/or stated rhetoric in such
forums as newspapers interviews and public speeches." In their own ways, Professors
Williams and Gascon-Vera sought to nudge us to an understanding that it was necessary to
take on the poem in its own terms before we arrived at any conclusions about what it had to
say.
"Somebody Blew up America" is about 240 lines long. It asks some fundamental
questions about what took place on September 11. It begins with a declaration: "(All thinking
people/oppose terrorism/both domestic/& international.../But one should not/ be used/ To
cover the other.)" That seems clear enough to the reader. After such a declaration, the poem
states:
They say its some terrorist, some
barbaric
A Rab, in
Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
As a poet, he can only answer these questions through the preparation and organization of
language to arrive at a particular stance on the matter. Even more importantly, a poem is
meant to be heard rather than read. But it is significant that before he even says a word about
the Jews, he uses language that resonates in a manner that brings home the pain and suffering
that African Americans and all other oppressed groups have had to undergo at the hands of
white American terrorists.
Beginning with the assertion that somebody blew up America, the poem utilizes a
rhetorical strategy that asks the questions: why and who. Each unit of the poem contributes to
the making of its meaning and reaches its crescendo when it asks the ultimate question: "Who
and Who and Who WHO (+) who who /Whoooo and WhooooooOOOOOOooooOoooo!"
Such urgency, captured at its most intense in Baraka's reading of the poem, suggests that more
than four lines are at stake in this poem. Wrenching four lines from this poem does it a
terrible injustice, no matter how passionate one feels about the sentiments that are expressed.
There are other aids that help us to understand the poem. Although the poet's explication
of his text is not/should not be taken as self-evident truth, anyone who wishes to understand
what Baraka is about in this poem cannot be unmindful of what he says about what he tried to
achieve in his poem. In a statement of October 2, 2002 ("Statement by Amiri Baraka, New
Jersey Poet Laureate: 'I Will Not 'Apologize,' I will not resign"), Baraka offers many clues
about how his poem ought to be read. He says "the poem's underlying theme focuses on how
Black Americans have suffered from domestic terrorism since being kidnapped into US
chattel slavery, e.g., by Slave Owners, US & State Laws, Klan, Skin Heads, Domestic Nazis,
Lynching, denial of rights, national oppression, racism, character assassination, historically,
and at this very minute throughout the US. The relevance of this to Bush's call for a 'War on
Terrorism,' is that Black people feel we have always been victims of terror, governmental and
general, so we cannot get as frenzied and hysterical as the people who while asking to dismiss
our history and contemporary reality to join them, in the name of a shallow 'patriotism' in
attacking the majority of people in the world, especially people of color and in the third
world." In researcher's way of seeing, such a goal has nothing to do with the Jews and Sharon
per se. It has to do with an African-American response, if we may, to a very catastrophic
moment in our history.
Again, Baraka is very specific in his intention. He says: "We cannot in good conscience,
celebrate what seems to us an international crusade to set up a military dictatorship over the
world, legitimized at base, by white supremacy, carried out, no matter the crude lies, as the
most terrifying form of imperialism and its attendant national oppression. All of it designed to
drain super profits bluntly from the colored peoples of the world, but as well, from the
majority peoples of the world.!" Then he makes an important statement: "For all the frantic
condemnations of Terror by Bush & co, as the single International Super Power, they are the
most dangerous terrorists in the world!' There are many persons who would not/do not want
to believe this, but some of us see Bush's terrorist campaign as a way to scuttle many of our
civil liberties and the war directed against Iraq as a very dangerous undertaking."
This is Baraka's focus. Like it or not, this is where he wants to go. He is concerned about
oppressed people all over the world, even the Jews who suffered during the Holocaust, hence
his question (constant questioning): "Who put the Jews in ovens,/ and who helped them do it,/
Who said 'America First"/ and ok'd the yellow stars." As Baraka explains, the latter is "a
reference to America's domestic fascists just before World War II and the Nazi Holocaust."
Baraka also went out of his way to mention the names of Jews all over the world that were
"oppressed, murdered by actual Anti-Semitic forces, open or disguised." The poem asks:
"Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt/Who murdered the Rosenbergs/ All the good
people iced, tortured, assassinated, vanished." At its best, the poem acknowledges Jewish
suffering and pain and attempts to speak for all of those groups (and persons) who have been
oppressed by racist, terrorist and fascist forces that become rich in the process. He says that
he is a communist. Therefore, it seems reasonable that in the penultimate lines of the poem he
would ask:
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and
National oppression and Terror
Violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever Seen God?
But everybody seen The Devil.
These are powerful lines. Baraka means to be provocative. We may not "like" what he says,
but he believes he has an important literary statement to make and he demands that we
respond to his words. What, then, are the offending lines?
Who knew the World Trade center was gonna get Bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
And again the question:
Who? Who? Who/
In his reading, Baraka was careful to distinguish between Israeli citizens and American Jews.
He insists that he was not saying that "Israel was responsible for the Attack, but that they
knew and our counterfeit President did too!" Now, Baraka can certainly be taken to task for
this statement, but he has offered his evidence for such a conclusion. He says, even the
Democratic Party asserted that the administration knew much more than they told the public
and called for an investigation into same. As recently as November 22, the New York
Times questioned how much the CIA and FBI knew about the Saudi Arabia connection to the
events of September 11. But Baraka goes further. He argued that "Michael Ruppert of the
Green Party has issued a video stating clearly, 'Israeli security issued urgent warnings to the
CIA of large-scale terror attacks...And that the Israeli Mossad knew the attacks were going to
take place...they knew the World Trade Center were targets. This is from the British
newspaper The Telegraph." Speaking of the day in question, the British Telegraph of
September 16, 2001 had this to say:
In the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the 69-year-old Defense Secretary, was beginning a
working breakfast with a few Congress members to discuss missile defense. Stony-faced,
Rumsfeld voiced his long-held opinion that the US would face another terrorist attack in the
near future. "Let me tell ya," he drawled, "I've been around the block a few times. There will
be another event."
It was hardly the first warning: last month, Israeli intelligence officials had warned their
US counterparts that a large-scale terrorist attack on key targets on the American mainland
was imminent. Two senior military intelligence experts had been sent to Washington in
August to alert the CIA and FBI that a cell of 200 terrorists was preparing a major operation.
no one can say with any degree of ,Given our understanding of things as it were then
specificity that the CIA or the FBI knew the terrorists would pounce on the targets on which
.they did. But Baraka speaks from a particular site and from a specific point of view
Baraka is more specific about the second of the four offending lines. In trying to confirm
what the US knew, when it knew it, etc., Baraka insists that "Israeli security force, SHABAK
knew about the attack in advance. My sources were 'Ha'aret" and 'Yadiot Ahranot" (two
TV and the websites of the -Israeli newspapers) 'Al Watan' (a Jordanian newspaper), Manar
Israeli security force SHABAK. There are myriad references to this in Reuters, Der Spiegel.
The Israeli newspaper Yadiot Ahranot 1st revealed SHABAK had cancelled Sharon's
appearance in New York City that day, Sept 11, where he was supposed to speak at an "Israeli
to the effect Sharon was Star Ledger Day" celebration. This was also mentioned in the
supposed to visit the US, but no dates were mentioned. It is the Green Party's Ruppert who
makes the most effective case for the 4000 Israeli workers (Not Jewish Workers!) but Israeli
nationals. He says in his video, 'if what I am showing you is known overtly all through the
media, how much more does our thirty billion dollar intelligence community know'. . .
Nonsense' to say the Israeli did it. They were warning the US hands over fist. . . We reviewed '
line Wall St., Journal site. And -the list of former tenants of the World Trade Center at the on
there's the website. It is an alphabetical list of tenants. Scrool to the very bottom and notice
Israeli Shipping to Norfolk Virginia. They -the moving date for the office of Zim American
AB) input -were all in the World Trade Center. They must have had Mossad' or (Shabak
because they left one week before September and they broke their lease. The Israelis did not
".pull the attack, but they were smart enough to get their people out of the way
The present researcher must confess that he checked neither the video nor the Israeli
newspapers that Baraka cites. Baraka's conclusion may be right or it may be wrong. He
proclaiming his truths —and mad men do have their own truths -certainly is not a madman
without a smattering of evidence. As an artist, Baraka is using his poem to disturb, to ask us
were to questions what took place on September 11 and why. Speaking of five Israelis who
laughing while they were categorizing the collapse (and this is tough to believe), Baraka says:
throughout continuously chants the question WHO WHO WHO? …This is why the poem "
that aims to probe That is, who is responsible for this horrible crime and WHY? It is a poem
Semitism, as anyone who reads it -and disturb, but there is not the slightest evidence of Anti
".without some insidious bias would have to agree
However one takes Baraka's declaration, the crude sociological modes that Ellison
condemned has to come to terms with other semiological modes of literary analysis in which
the status of language within the novel or the poem are of enormous importance. Semioticians
(particularly someone such as Saussure) reminded us that there is a distinction between the
sound image (the signifier) and the concept (the signified) as he tried to move us away from
the notion that there is some "real world" out there which we refer to in words. They also
warn us that the "real world" we articulate through signs may not be the same (that is, may
not mean the same thing ) for/to all of us. Even Michel Foucault who violently objected to
witted 'commentators'', responded to -being called a (post)structuralist by "certain half
Eduardo Sanguinetti's appeal to realism with the following quip: "Reality does not
speak within exist...Language is all there is, and what we are talking about is language, we
p. 150). Suffice it to say, that ,The Many Lives of Michel Foucault ,language" (David Macey
when we examine a poem we must always be concerned to relate systems of signs to
.meaning
American tradition of literary criticism, an "epistemological -Even within the African
occurred when Henry ,)Lenin and Philosophy( break," to use the language of Louis Althusser
made a stunning advancement over Addison )]1988[ The Signifying Monkey( Louis Gates
when he argued that even an analysis of )]1975[ The Way of the New World( Gayle's work
African American literature had to supply a more sophisticated understanding of how
language functions in the making of any verbal work. Incidentally, this is one reason (apart
was )1937( Their Eyes Were Watching God from the work that Alice Walker did) why
Native elevated within the African American canon at the expense of Richard Wright's
American critical tradition of literature (and we have a -Even within the African .)1940( Son
way of looking at the world) crude sociological modes of analysis must give way to modes
.that seek to understand how language functions within the poem
It is these varied readings of cultural signs that have led to such disparate explications of
Vera and Williams have pointed out. -Baraka's poem. This is what Professors Gason
Vera pleads: "My defense is literature. Poems are poems, and for literature people, like -Gason
me, if they are good, they are sacred. I have not read [David] Duke, actually, if I remember
well he is popular racist who wanted to be Governor of Louisiana, isn't it he. I will probable
hate the man. However, if Duke will write a poem denouncing injustices and suffering of his
poem, with strong metaphors that could be analyses in a people and will do it with a strong
".literary, political, and historical context, I would love to teach it
Williams offers the following: "[In 'Somebody Blew Up America,'] there are plenty of
button political and historical issues ('Who got fat from plantations/Who -references to hot
genocide Indians/ Tried to waste the Black nation'). But there are no imputations to blame any
in fact, he is liberal in his -one group for the various social tragedies Baraka is railing against
American members of the Bush -suggestion that quite a few people including key African
administration might be called into question for their political beliefs or politics. Questioning
is in fact the dominant rhetorical strategy in Baraka's poem ('Who is them paying/Who telling
lies, etc.,') I suppose that my real questions are: how do we go about anchoring claims that
"?racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. beliefs-someone's art per se is responsible for promoting
We must always examine how language is used in a particular work of art. After D. H.
phallic reality" and " it was condemned for its ,Lady Chatterley's Lover Lawrence published
indescribable corruption." When the novel arrived in the United States copies were "
confiscated by the US customs on grounds that such "vile" and "vulgar" language would
in the specific context of subvert the morals of the community. As Professor Williams asks
Somebody Blew up America": "How do we read Joseph Conrad's portrayal of soulless, "
After being excoriated by the press, ?Heart of Darkness savage 'niggers' in Conrad's
Lady Chatterley's Lover: A ( "Lawrence exclaimed "Nobody likes being called a cesspool
xxxii). One could not help but hear similar resonances in ",Lover Propos of 'Lady Chatterley
Semite. No one likes being slandered. Your slander will -Baraka's outburst: "I am not an Anti
.life!" (Lecture, November 22) be with me for the rest of my
We may or may not like "Somebody Blew up America." Yet, we cannot reduce the poem
to a crude sociological document. It requires a special kind of expertise and discipline to
understand it. This does not mean that we have to like it. Many may find it disturbing, but
then that is the author's purpose. Many may find it offensive or worse, that, too, is a
conclusion we must also respect. Yet, as scholars and teachers, we have a special obligation
to our colleagues, our students and our college, to act as educated men and women to whom
our community little good if we do rationality and analysis are of primary importance. We do
not ask our students to look at this (and other texts) seriously, carefully and knowledgeable.
.These are indispensable criteria for ferreting out the truth of any literary act
Baraka's work has enriched the lives of many persons throughout the world. As he
of the terrors and displayed, the thrust of his work is meant to disturb our peaceful acceptance
evils of this world. Unless Wellesley is different from other parts of the world, Baraka's work
will continue to do for Wellesley what it has done for the rest of the world. Twenty years
as Poe's truth, will have more value than from now, Baraka's truth, as Whitman's truth, and
anything his critics have said. The truth of Baraka's work, warts and all, will live on as long as
we respect the power of the word and the lucidity with which it captures the struggles of all
.over the world oppressed people all
some background:
Amiri Baraka(1934- 2014) was a poet, playwright, University teacher and cultural critic who burst
onto the American scene with an off-Broadway play The Dutchman- a searing look at racial
tensions in a NYC subway. He was writing at that time under the name LeRoi Jones. After the
assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, Baraka changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka.
In subsequent years he headed a Harlem Renaissance movement bringing together scholars, artists,
and students in his search for the expression of the American Black experience. In essays written in
the 1960's he spoke of the effects the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK had on him and his change
of view about what constitutes a classless society because of them.
A native of Newark, New Jersey he was offered the first appointment as the State’s Poet Laureate in
2002, a term of two years with a stipend of $10,000 and, following the attacks of 9/11, he published
his poem Somebody Blew up America.
Some facts:
George Bush said, mistakenly, that 130 Israeli nationals died on 9/11, in a speech following the
attacks. In a listing of nationalities, official reports include 18 from Colombia, 13 from Ecuador, 24
from Canada, 11 from Germany, 47 from Dominican Republic, 41 from India, 24 from Japan, 28
South Korea, 67 United Kingdom.
Possibly as a result of a text message from the Israeli messaging company Odigo, a statistically
almost impossible 3 Israelis died in the Twin Towers, and two more on the planes.
Israeli Haaretz reported (2004) that
"Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours
before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen..."
Other coincidences are that Bush cousin Jim Pierce was supposed to be at a meeting on the 105th
floor of WTC2, but the meeting is moved across the street at the last minute. Also not at work that
day in the towers were owner Larry Silverstein, who usually had breakfast at the Windows on the
World restaurant, nor his son or daughter, who had offices on the 88th floor of the North Tower. The
New York Observer said that the Silverstein children were "running late."
One Israeli company in the towers, the Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co., broke its lease and
moved out of the WTC 2 weeks before the attacks. Zim is 49% owned by the Israeli government.
(On a note of grace within this rubbish:One of the American Jews who died in the towers was Abe
Zelmanowitz, an Orthodox Jew who worked as a computer programmer on the 27th floor. He
refused to leave the side of his friend, Ed Beyea, a devout Catholic, who was a quadriplegic and
confined to a wheelchair).
Some responses:
In poetry of such scope and density and allusion to real world figures, Baraka's work was
reminiscent of the Cantos of Pound or Peter Dale Scott's Minding the Darkness, or Ginsberg's Howl.
Such didn't stop the ADL for latching onto 12 words as "anti-semitic" and demanding Baraka's
removel as Poet Laureate. The Governor James McGreevey (himself under investigation for
campaign finance abuses involving the father of Ken of the Ken & Barbie MidEast Diplomatic
Corps), lead the way. In the previous year, the father felon of Ken had brought an Israeli man
Gordon Cipel and introduced him to McGreevey. McGreevey promptly hired him as his "Homeland
Security" director and after an uproar ( zero experience, a foreign National) the Gov shifted him to
another job. Within a year Cipel was preparing to file a sexual harassment lawsuit against
McGreevey at the same time investigators were breathing down his neck. In a cringe worthy
moment in the history of a State filled with them, McGreevey hauled his wife and his parents on
stage for a TV press conference where he announced he wished to live as "a Gay man" and would
resign a 60 days.
Baraka (unlike the NY Times, say, which "disavowed" and "apologized for" a POLITICAL
CARTOON - of a dog faced Netanyahu leading a blind Trump to enlightenment about Israel's
violations of International Law. Matter of fact, they stopped ALL political cartoons - buying into the
"anti-semitic trope" nonsense. Jonathan Swift wouldn't be able to find work today- with the self
righteous Puritans telling everyone else what to do and who hates who. Baraka - to his everlasting
credit- told them to go to Hades. The New Jersey legislature then voted to ABOLISH the honor of a
Poet Laureate. Years later when asked if he regretted anything from this experience, he said :
No — I have regrets that they didn't pay me my money — cheap criminals. I have regrets about
that," Baraka said. "But I don't have regrets about writing the poem. Because the poem was true."