Who the hell even knew New Jersey had a poet laureate? Let the Sopranos jokes begin:
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Gov. James E. McGreevey has called for the resignation of the state’s poet laureate, citing a poem critical of Israel that Amiri Baraka [a.k.a. Le Roi Jones] read at a festival earlier this month. Baraka read his poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” at the 2002 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival at Waterloo Village in Stanhope on Sept. 19. “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed,” read a line from the poem, which was cited by the Jewish Standard weekly newspaper. “Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day? Why did Sharon stay away?”
Baraka said he had no intention of apologizing or resigning. He strongly rejected the criticism, denied he is an anti-Semite, and said that criticism of Israel does not amount to anti-Semitism. The poet laureate position was created in 1999 and pays $10,000 per two-year term. A recommendation to name Baraka as poet laureate earlier this year came from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, in consultation with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Davitt said the title of poet laureate and the grant money cannot be rescinded, and the decision to resign is entirely up to Baraka.
I read in another news article that he believes it’s true because “I read it on the Internet.” Obviously Mr. Baraka/Jones does not have Snopes or the SDMB bookmarked . . .
I wanna be the NJ Poet Laureate! Let’s see . . . “There once was a girl in Hoboken . . .”
While I agree that criticism of Israel does not equal anti-Semitism, I also agree that Baraka is a tool.
There once was a girl from Hoboken,
Who figured Baraka was jokin’.
When assured he was serious.
She became furious,
and said, “What the hell was he smokin’?”
IIRC, from my days of working my MA and beyond focusing on the Beat movement, Baraka was always a fringe member of the literary establishment. He’s made his name by being a mediocre poet who is able to play the press to keep himself in the news as one of the “oppressed.”
From the Viking Portable Library’s Beat Reader (1992), such an apologist and censor of everything negative of the Beats as Ann Charters says, “After the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, he left his white wife and friends and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem as a black cultural nationalist…In 1966, Baraka moved back to Newark and has been active in politics there ever since, defining himself as a Marxist-Leninist Third World Socialist.”
IMHO, he’s a nut who’s been able to get published and make a lot of noise. But then again, who aside from the few of the Teeming Millions who pay attention to poetry know of any living poets, let alone the dead ones.
This is not an example of criticism of Israel, but of blatant anti-Semitism. The rumor-mongering about pre-knowledge of the WTC attacks has variously specified both Jews and Israelis as somehow having been spared. It’s another example of virulent anti-Israel hate-mongering as a surrogate for anti-Semitism.
The best thing the N.J. governor could do at this point is issue an official proclamation apologizing for his lapse of judgment in naming LeRoi state poet laureate, and declaring him the official New Jersey Brain-Dead Bigot.
[hijack] You know what I can’t stand? When artists can’t just be called by their taken stage name. “In other news, Snoop Doggy Dog (real name Calvin Broadus)…” Do they say “Bob Dylan (aka Robert Zimmerman)”? No. “Madonna [Ciccione]”? No. Amiri Baraka has been called that since at least the 60s; must his birth name continue to be cited? I just don’t get it. [/hijack]
Maybe it’s because I’m an old bat, Gigi, but I have heard of “Le Roi Jones;” I have never heard of “Amiri Baraka.” Which is the made-up name, by the way? I’m not familiar with the Jew-hating bastard’s work, and both names sound pretty faux to me.
Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Hmmm . . . He ain’t no Alfred, Lord Tennyson, that’s for sure. “Like an Owl exploding in your life?”
Weird timing. I actually heard Baraka speak on Friday afternoon. He came to talk to a few sections of UVA theatre classes. One of my friends, who was in the class, told me that I should come, since a “playwright” was coming for a question and answer session (Baraka wrote a number of plays, including The Dutchmen)
I though, “Oh, boy! A guy who is in the profession that I want to pursue is coming to talk about his craft! Yay!” What I got was an hour-long tirade against every kind of imaginary oppression that he could imagine. The basic point of his talk was that if art doesn’t serve some revolutionary or culturally significant purpose, it’s complete crap. Some of the gems of the session were when he expressed his disgust that Broadway consisted of nothing but “crappy, fluffy import plays.” At one point he actually used the phrase “mental masturbation,” in regards to any art that doesn’t fight the power.
Oh, and Israel came up too, somehow. I’m not exactly sure how we managed to go from playwriting to the Middle East, but I guess it made sense to someone. Basically, he praised the Palestinian suicide bombers for their efforts, and elevated them to hero status. One of his quotes went along the lines of “They do it because there’s no option left. If somebody’s trying to talk peace with you, and they’re weaker, you’re not gonna listen. But if you’re eating a pizza in a food court and you get blown up, you’re sure as Hell gonna listen.” :rolleyes: He also defended the fact that many of his plays were chauvanistic and prejudiced against women.
Words can’t describe how stupid some of the things he spewed sounded. It was interesting hearing him talk about his work as a black civil rights activist, but I couldn’t help but wonder how somebody who fought hate for so long can latch onto hate of another kind so easily and quickly. He didnt’ actually talk about the playwriting process once, either, so the whole thing was basically just a dissapointment. He apparently gave a bit speech that night, but needless to say, I did not attend.
(Oh, and Eve, Le Roi Jones is his real name, he took on the name of “Amiri Baraka” when he joined Islam)
Well, obviously, one too many owls have exploded in his life. Or maybe not enough owls have. I am just not sure what effect all this owl-exploding has on one’s life . . .
Oh, I forgot to add that he even had his own little Jackson/Sharpton-esque tirade against Barbershop. Of that he had the following to say: “Those guys who made that movie, they don’t realize that without the people who they were making fun of, without Dr. King and Ms. Parks and Mr. Jackson, they wouldn’t even be able to make that movie! And there they go making fun of them!”
Now the Dr. King and Ms. Parks part I can almost understand, if you have absolutely no sense of humor when you watch that scene of the movie. But Jesse Jackson?! What has he done other than make an ass of himself?
And did anybody else think that that poem sounded like a Black-Power Dr. Seuss? He’ll fight Whitey on a boat,
He’ll fight Whitely-colored goats,
He’ll fight Whitey on a train,
Whitey’s the one who crashed the plane,
He’ll explode all Whitey’s owls,
And make odd reference to hooting fowls!
C’mon, gigi! If the thread title was “Bad, Bad, Amiri Baraka,” it wouldn’t have been 1/8 as funny. (The thread title references a Jim Croce song called “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”
