Amiri Baraka has died

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http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/j ... -poet-dies

I'm not a fan, personally, because of his homophobia (which was an arguably internalised affair) and misogyny ( the latter of which isn't mentioned in the obituary, surprise surprise.) He wrote some disgusting crap about women and gay people. I'm definitely not one to be PC, but he was so extremely hateful, I don't accept the fact that he was angry at the time as an excuse. Which is saying a lot, because I normally give artists a great deal of license.

I do see the cultural significance of what he did and found Dutchman interesting. He was a major figure in the Beat generation and the Black Arts Movement.

Last edited by puddingmouse on 09 Jan 2014, 11:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

And he was one of those people who come off better in poetry than prose sometimes: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/po ... epoems.htm

Years ago, my daughter went to hear him speak. When he was done speaking, she tried to talk to him like many in an audience do but she said he was very unfriendly.

Do I mourn or do I celebrate? I usually have mourn when I read of the death of a celebrity on WP, but this one's a toss up.

he really liked fried chicken. what really impressed me about him was................ he is going to change the world with what he is about to do, and that would be................ some movement of somekind????? and to actually do...... something. did I mention that he really liked fried chicken.

Never heard of him.

Same.

Still, I hope his legacy provides some benefit for future generations.

If only to provide a lesson to be careful not to get caught up in hatred and extreme movements when you're young, angry and talented.

For one so homophobic, it's odd that he should have associated with Beats like Ginsberg, who was openly gay.

Well he had a few gay experiences himself, so I think it was internalised homophobia.

He only went all bigoted in the 60s after the Kennedy assassination and the civil rights movement going radical. He tried to be all macho and Black Panther for a decade and after he calmed down in the mid 70s, he turned into a Marxist. It still doesn't excuse some of the things he wrote, though.

I very definitely HAVE heard of LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka). But am not quite an expert on him. Never studied him head-on so dont really know his whole life and work. But have had some glancing blows with him as a reader.

He wrote two memorable, but very different works, I happened to have encountered.

Someone I knew was giving away old books free, and I grabbed "Blues People: Negro Music in White America"- his non fiction history of Black music written in 1963(just before the Beatles and James Brown took America by storm). It was an awesome primer on Jazz, and the roots of rock.

I believe he was the one who wrote the poem "I Am A Cowboy in the Boat of Ra" in which he casts himself as a Black Roy Rodgers riding across the cosmos with the Egyptian solar diety Amen Ra. I loved the comical surreal juxtaposing of Hollywood westerns with ancient Egyptian mythology. It made a point about how our own society is just as embedded in its own mythology as any ancient culture.

But he was a bit fringy. Just now googled him- and learned that he had some contraversial ideas about 9-11.