UPDATE: On July 3, 2003, New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey signed a bill abolishing the post of poet laureate in order to remove Amiri Baraka.

Interviewing Amiri Baraka

lamont b. steptoe

 

The artist must choose between slavery and freedom. I have made my choice. —Paul Robeson

Poet/playwright/novelist/essayist/music critic/artist/activist, Amiri Baraka, formerly LeRoi Jones is an artist that embodies the spirit of Robeson’s quote, that of a warrior for freedom. He is America’s acknowledged father of the Black Arts Movement and enfant terrible of American letters. Prior to becoming the father of the Black Arts Movement, Baraka was a seminal figure of the Beat Generation and was known then as LeRoi Jones. He along with the poets, Ted Joans and the late, Bob Kaufman were the highest profiled Afro-American members of the Beat Generation.

In other places and at other times, I have referred to him as "a bebop sentence in a Dick and Jane world" and "the air traffic controller" of America’s Black soul. I first met him in 1982 in Philadelphia, having accompanied another Philadelphia poet to pick him up at the train station for a poetry reading at a now defunct artist bar called Bacchanal. From then until now, I have grown to know him and his art more and more profoundly. I first interviewed him in 1984, during a performance with jazz saxophonist, Archie Shepp at Philadelphia’s Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum for a community newspaper, The South Street Star.

I next interviewed him in June of 2000 for a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania based arts quarterly, now defunct called The Heart Quarterly. Between those two events, I have spent the last ten years dropping in on his monthly Soiree’s called Kimako’s Blues People held the last Saturday of every month. I last interviewed him February 2, 2003 at his home in Newark, New Jersey, the site of the second interview as well.

The occasion of the last interview concerned the furor that ensued over his now famous poem "Somebody Blew Up America" concerning the events of 9/11 in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Schwenksville, Pennsylvania. I think the final interview is best introduced by a number of questions posed during the second interview which outline his philosophy and influences and thereby act as foundation for his actions pertaining to 9/11.

I first heard "Somebody Blew Up America" on the Center City campus of Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in late October of 2001. It was Baraka’s last poem for the night and was received with a loud, long, standing ovation by the overflow crowd of students, faculty and community folks in attendance. I next heard it read in September of 2002 at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in the Village of Waterloo in Stanhope, New Jersey. It was after his reading of the poem at this venue that he once again stepped into the crosshairs of the American empire. By this time, he had been appointed Poet Laureate of New Jersey, announced the month before. When the news broke the Governor, James McGreevey was demanding an apology for the poem which he deemed" anti-Semetic and hateful" I once again rushed to Newark, New Jersey to be present at the news conference called by Baraka at the Newark Public Library on October 2, 2003 to answer his critics. The full text of this press conference can be read at Baraka’s website: http://www.amiribaraka.com/speech100202.html

for those so interested. Now, to the interviews.

I.

Interview of June 14, 2000

LS: I’d like to begin with just a general question. Since you are credited with being a founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960’s, what is the state of the Black Arts Movement in 2000 on he eve of the millennium?

AB: Well, I think a lot of the things that come out of the Black Arts Movement have now been absorbed at least, you know among Black writers, either for the positive or the negative. They’ve either absorbed that and continued to apply some of those ideas, or they reject it. And that was always the case. As far as absorbed, those ideas, put simplistically enough, were one, that we were going to write—we were focusing on poetry, but we meant everything—we were going to write so that it was demonstrably Black. We wanted to write an Afro-American poetry that was as recognizable as Duke Ellington or Billy Holiday. I remember earlier people used to say, "Oh, Mr Jones, I didn’t even know that was written by a Black person." I always thought that was kinda sickening. And then we — the second part, we wanted a poetry or an art that would be mass — that would come out of the libraries and the universities — would be, you know, have an impact on the masses of Black people. That’s why I was happy to see the emergence of rap. ’Cause I always connected that to our own efforts. And then, third, we wanted a poetry that was revolutionary that would aid in the Black Liberation movement. That would be, a weapon in the struggle for self-determination and democracy.

LS: So do you see rap carrying this legacy forward on point? Do you see the more conscious hip hop being on point for…

AB: Yeah. Obviously, some of it. But it’s — everything splits in half and then everything when it splits in half has three sectors. It has the advanced, kinda middle forces and the backward. And I think what happened rap came out in the early thing very, very much focused on — the thrust of it not political, socio-political focus, but some kind of like treacherous kind of caricature and even a negative comment about Black people. But when you listen to say, my own son Raz’s thing, you know, "Shorty for Mayor" with Lauren Hill, or even, the early Carey Swan, people like that, you hear a definite—even now a lotta rap is political and positive. So it’s always gonna be that what the corporations, like the big imperialist corporations select to push is always gonna be negative. I mean you can say that about poetry, Black literature or drama — anything. White literature and drama for that matter! What they pick up to push is gonna be the negative.

LS: Now it seems as we look around the country almost thirty years later, we see a lot of universities closing down Black Studies departments or pulling out the rug from supporting a lot of the groundwork that was made in the 60’s by Black writers. What has been the over — it seems that the academy has always resisted this — this kind of movement, or acknowledging the gains made in the Black Arts Movement.

AB: It’s not just the academy. The academy is part of the super structure. It’s raised, like DuBois said the Sisyphus syndrome: you push it up the hill, it’s gonna get pushed back down. And you can say that whether you’re talkin’ about 40 acres and a mule that was promised and then, a year later President, Andrew Johnson, after they killed Lincoln, vetoed the Freedmans Bureau and pulled the troops outta the South. And then suddenly, the Klan rose up and established that kind of racial fascism in the South that we still fightin’ with this confederate flag issue. Or we can say that by 1876 Reconstruction was over. By 1892, they had re-imposed all that racial segregation and by the beginning of the 20^th century, coinciding with the reemergence of say, the Harlem Renaissance, Black people could not vote anywhere in the South. They had re-imposed that. The same thing happened in the 20’s when DuBois and Garvey and the Black Brotherhood and the Communist Party in the ‘30’s – all those people were pushin’ that rock up the hill.

The Harlem Renaissance was just like the Black Arts Movement. It endeavored to do the same thing. But then, they had cooled it out by the 40’s and the 50’sand then that coincided with the reemergence of the Civil Rights movement comin’ back out. And at the same time, they had sort of whited out tried to white out all of the Black Arts. I mean, in the 50’s they couldn’t completely white it out, so they started bring in the Baldwin’s and Lorraine Hansberry who were the dominant writers, American writers, of the fifties to my mind. But at the same time their positive kind of impact led to an even broader opening, which is the Black Arts Movement. You see, I always think of Jimmy and Lorraine as the opening shots really of the Black Arts Movement,even thought they were supposedly more mainstream. But what they did is take the things that the generation before them gave them and made that even more articulate, I think. What Richard Wright had done, say, Lorraine and Jimmy took even further and made more positive. of course Richard recanted and went backwards once he denounced Marxism and became almost a kind of sycophant of the establishment when he got out of this country.

So you always have that sort of backwardism. Langston even, when he appeared before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, he recanted. He denounced his own early writings. DuBois criticized him for not including Robeson in his book of great Black musicians. You know Langston was cowed by this House on American Activities. But one thing about Langston, he never totally turned around. He never became an enemy of the revolution, and he in his later years with his last books even tried to reclaim a kind of militant stance, I think. But in that kind of situation comes then the young people who say that, myself included — would say that: well, this is what it is but it needs to be more. And not completely clear on what was going on, not completely historically focused, and not thoroughly even understanding the gifts that we — that our people — that those who proceeded us had given us. See, that’s the problem. Took me twenty years after that to actually find out what was totally Lorraines thing, what was totally Jimmy’s thing, what the total thrust of a Langston or Sterling Brown, those people. So part of that, because we don’t have institutions — we don’t have an alternative superstructure to fight the once that exists — that is, we don’t have the institutions and the organizations to push a philosophy that’s an alternative to the philosophy that comes out of this economic base — it takes us longer then to find out these things.

’Cause we don’t find — even if we go to college, we don’t find those things out in college. We find the reverse. So then it takes either another movement to say: Aye, all you writers are not really looking at what you’re heritage is. You don’t really know who you are. You understand? ’Cause that was our problem. We didn’t really know who we were. We knew we were writers, Black writers. But we didn’t really know what our, say, the huge kind of treasure chest that had been bequeathed to us was.

LS: But there was a time when you didn’t see Jimmy Baldwin on the same side of the line as you.

AB: Well, that’s because Jimmy left. See, when I first came out of the Air Force, I — I loved Jimmy Baldwin’s first book, Notes of a Native Son. When I saw Notes of a Native Son — when I saw that big eyed Black man in the window on that book, I identified — I fell in love with that image right away, ’cause I said, "Hey, man, that’s heavy." And I read those things. But then Jimmy, you remember, left the country and went to Europe and began to, you know, Jimmy evolved like the rest of us. And a lot of people like Skip Gates and them say that it was me and nationalists that intimidated him into changing him — no. But Jimmy himself was not foolish. He was a very highly intelligent man, and he began to see that what Europe had to offer him mainly was alienation — from himself. You see, why he had fled the United States was, he said, because he always thought he was gonna end up killin’ some of these people. You know, if you read Notes of a Native Son you see that. And I criticized him in a couple of essays only. One was a review of a book of his where he was talkin’ about, "We need to love each other." And I said that sounds like Reese Beach. It don’t sound like nobody whose involved in, you know, struggle. And I did criticize him. And I think that Jimmy took that in a very noble way. You know he never held that really against me, that I knew, and when he came back — look, I mean the Civil Rights movement, James Baldwin — the stuff I wrote about him is pretty much just before the main thrust of the Civil Rights movement.

But he came back and he was one of the voices that people remember of the Civil Rights Movement — when he started going around, actually traveling with King in some of those demonstrations. Even Maya (Angelou) was involved in — she worked for King. She was in SCLC. She went to Ghana and worked with Nkrumah. You know, a lot of people who just come on the scene don’t know that, and they think that somehow Maya’s getting something that she didn’t work for. That’s not true. And whatever disagreement you have with people about specific issues — certainly I didn’t agree about that Clarence Thomas business — but still, she, Maya’s no recently arrived Johnny-come-lately, don’t know what’s happenin,’ just reapin’ the benefits. She’s had her shoulder to the wheel a long time. And same thing with Jimmy when he came back and got involved with the movement. I had a lot of respect for that. And unlike people like Ralph Ellison who claimed Negroes was wrong headed for doin’ so and so and so on and that we are actually a part of America — we knew we was part of America is what I wrote. I said we knew that. We were saying that we did not like the part of it that they left for us to be.

LS: Is Amiri Baraka still writing plays? And if so, do you have any plans to produce and of your plays in the near future?

AB: Well, you know, plays are very hard. I write plays. I got plays that have not been produced. None of ‘em — a play about Mandela, a play about O.J. Simpson. It’s hard to get those kind of plays produced. It takes a while. I just wrote a play a couple of years ago called "Remembering Weselves" about the Harlem Renaissance that was done here. I’ve got a bunch of plays that Miguel Algarin did at the Nuyorican that still need to be done: "The Election Machine Warehouse," "General Hague Skizag," "Jackpot Melting" — then older plays like "Primitive World," which David Murray wrote the music for. I still have some plays, like a play for DuBois called "The Most Dangerous Man in America." I’ve got a bunch of plays and there are older plays which were done once. The man down at the New Jersey Performance Arts venue is threaten’ to do some. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. I know Woody’s (King) tryin’ to get some done. And maybe I’ll start doin’ some of the shorter ones downstairs again. You know there’s plays that were done in the 60’s and 70’s that really need to be done again: "Great Goodness of Life," "Song," "What Was the Relationship of the Lone Ranger to the Means of Production?" There’s a lot of plays! People be surprised how many plays. But I think maybe the best thing to do is start reading some of those plays — you know, having people read the plays rather than tryin’ to go through the whole…

LS: Have you thought about publishing them in a collection?

AB: Yeah. Yeah. I tried to get one called "America at the End of the Twentieth Century," might still be called that… but you know publishers are off me for a long, long time. And I think that’s — like Jimmy, they got off him at the end. Like DuBois, they got off him. You know for 17 years they wouldn’t publish DuBois’ name in the New York Times! When he sent ’em a manuscript, they’d send him back a mimeoed form. That’s DuBois. Yeah.

So you figure that if they do that — and look, Lorraine, they commissioned "Father of the Drinking Gourd" — NBC commissioned that and then wouldn’t do it when they discovered what it was about. So I don’t see myself as any kind of a unique figure. That’s the lot of artists who reflect the people’s actual condition. I mean, I don’t see how artists can think they supposed to be doin’ better than the people they tryin’ to reflect. I mean that would be weird if I was getting all this stuff, more than the people — no. Then that means somehow you must not be reflecting that exactly. The more exactly you reflect that the more exactly you gonna have to reflect the treatment, you see. I mean, I can’t see people rushin’ to do this thing I just wrote, this Diallo play.

LS: What’s it called?

AB: It’s called "Harlem Lynching." So it’s — I can’t see them rushing to do that (laughs) any more than they would do — see, at one point when you were confused to a certain extent, then they can do the work because it’s ambiguous what you’re sayin’. But the more directly focused on what your saying you’ve become, then the less likely you are to get produced.

LS: Can you tell me, Amiri, about the relationship and the influence that Allen Ginsberg had upon you as an emerging artist? As one of the seminal Afro-Americans on the beat scene, what was your relationship before you moved uptown?

AB: Well, Allen was one of the — as I said a lot of times, Allen, when I came back from the Air Force expecting to see all of these world class intellectuals, that alas was not the case, unless those people were various kinds of poseurs and different, whatever - but anyway Howl had just come out. I was impressed with it. The language and the stance generally was very much in contrast to academic American poetry in the 50’s. And so — I remember I wrote him a letter — he was in Paris at the time — asking was he for real! I remember I wrote it on toilet paper — a nutty idea. He wrote me back on toilet paper and said he was tired of being Allen Ginsberg. So when he came back — I had started putting out this magazine, Yugen - I asked him would he send me some work and suggest others as well. And he did. He responded. He sent all kinds of people’s names. He sent poetry. He sent me Phillip Whalen, Corso and Burroughs.

LS: So how did you and Allen get along throughout that time that you were downtown.? (In the Village)

AB: Well, Allen, you remember was on the road a lot. I was impressed by his knowledge of Western poetry really. Allen had a really comprehensive knowledge of the history of Western poetry from the ancient monks and shit to throughout the centuries. Not only his whole thing with Blake, but Kit Smart and people like that. People I’d never heard of. The troubadours and all of that. The most important thing for me that Allen was doing was talking about American poetry. American poetry had it’s own paucity, it’s own sound and that the people of American poetry stop following this kinda Anglo model, you know, this English model. That they should be writing open and be writing about their own lives and their own history. And that was very impressive to me. And I think of all the things that Allen said, those were the things that had the most lasting effect on me, the thing about that was American speech. And that’s why he trumpeted William Carlos Williams.

I tried to put together this united front. Objectively, not in any kinda organizational way, but between the so called "Beats"— of whom Allen was really the only one — the San Francisco poets, people like Whalen and Snyder and McClure and then eventually people like Duncan, and then the Black Mountain people: Olson and Creeley. And most of those people lived in New York, the younger ones, and so those were the people that really became friends of mine. Joel Oppenhiemer and Max Fenstein and Gilbert Sorrentino — the people were doing that. You know, Joe Early, Sam Abrams — a lot of the people who were actually following the Black Mountain — actually the Creeleysque kind of short (laughing) 16^th century line. But Charlie Olson became the most impressive person for me. finally more than Allen, in terms of the theory of poetry. And I published the deep — the early essays of his that people found incomprehensible. You know projective verse, which I thought and still think is an important statement on American poetry, the fact of breaking out of the set kind of versification of the academics and actually writing in the field, of actually seeking the poetry wherever it came, rather than having some set group of poetic topics and meter that you used. That the poem had to break out of all of that and assume the space that America assumed, you know the newness and expanse of openness to everything that the United States is presumably.

And that’s when I met a lot of the people like Ed Dorn, who recently died, who was a very close friend of mine, who I liked because he was very, very pugnacious and defiant. And he was always getting on people’s nerves because he refused to accept, like, little clichés, even in social relations. So I always liked Ed. And his last books I think were — those little books that he did — those little books that are almost like aphorisms. I think those are very fine books. And then, of course, the New York poets. O’Hara, I think was the most important of those. (Frank O’Hara)

LS: Why?

AB: Well, because Frank had more knowledge about the world than any of the rest of them. He knew the world. He knew about Russian poetry. He knew about French-speaking African poets. He knew about the music. He was an art critic. We worked together uptown when I got a job as a technical editor up in the east ’40s. He worked for the Museum of Modern Art. We used to meet for lunch all the time and talk.

And he was a very stylish person personally and very funny. He reminded me a lot of Jimmy in his kind of flashy kind of pronouncements. I mean the first time I heard that somebody was campy was out of Frank’s mouth. But I thought that they were all healthy contrasts to that kind of, what we used to call, "the Pack Simpson bunch"— the kind of dead American — well, let’s say Anglo imitating American academic verse. You know, the kind of Joel Hollander and all that really kind of grim, dull, ugly stuff like that. And so I thought in publishing that magazine we were really trying to do, you know, what I’m still trying to do: create an alternative to that.

LS: What was your relationship to Bob Kaufman and Ted Joans on the scene?

AB: Well, Ted I knew from early on, because I had even read about Ted when I was in the Air Force, when he opened up his gallery what was it called? Gallery Fantastique? With the rhinosaurus as his patron saint. And he introduced the works of this painter, REGGIN NAM, who was his own work — nigger man spelled backwards! (laughs)

And I always thought he was funny. Ted came out as a painter. When the Black Arts Movement, well, not Black Arts, when the Beat thing went up, then Ted got into that full fledge and became a quote "Beat poet". I mean Ted was the person who used to advertise himself as "rent-a-beatnik" in the Village Voice and he actually would be rented to go stand at people’s parties. I mean Ted was always interested in gimmicks and he was always a surrealist. He liked Dada and all that stuff.

Kaufman lived on the West coast and I saw him when he came here. First he moved here for a little while. Bob and I got to be very tight. I always thought Bob was a great dude. He was a very intense person with a very, very deep kind of surrealistic humor. It was interesting that both Kaufman and Ted were surrealists. And I think Kaufman, with that Beatitudes Magazine, it was, I think, that that really popularized the kind of outré ontology of quote "the Beat" you know, with his whole thing about — what did he call ’em? When he started talking about his — about shrinking and about all of that stuff and what Beats — what Beatitude Magazine sort of codified: that whole Beat lingo in a way. It’s unfortunate that Bob could not make it on his Beat stuff because he was really, in terms of that out bohemian stuff, he was the outset. But see the problem with Bob is that Bob also had a real social conscience and ended up boxing with them goddamn cops up and down the Beach.

LS: North Beach.

AB: North Beach all the time. I mean he went to jail countless times. Beat up countless times. Last time I saw him, I was really disgusted and told those people out there that it was very jive for them to be sailin’ around on their laurels and for Bob to be like that. As a matter of fact I wrote a piece —

LS: What year was that?

AB: About a year before he died.

LS: Oh, he died in 1986, so that would have been 1985?

AB: Something like that. I went out there to read in a big festival out there. I think I was out there with – my wife went there with me. I know Jane Cortez read. Ted Joans read. And Bob was in horrible shape. He’d been beat up recently around the whole hotel thing, trying to keep people from being thrown out of that hotel. The Swiss-American Hotel down there. And I wrote something about that. I have to recover that ’cause I sent it to somebody whose never done anything with it and I don’t know if I’ve even got all the pages to it.

LS: Was it a poem or an essay?

AB: Oh, no, no, no, it was an essay. It was an essay on Bob. And really what I understood about why he — ’cause he thought that in terms of that Beat shit that he should be able to be a famous Beat poet, you know and make a living being that too. But that’s not the truth ’cause that shit was as segregated as anything else. I mean, look how many books that all these other people have and look at Bob. I mean you know, he published in New Directions. I don’t think he — well, I guess he did publish with Ferlinghetti finally. But most of that stuff was not, you know — that thing about the Abomunist manifesto and all that stuff, that was Bob, alone time before Beat was anything but a media phrase. Kaufman had actually codified it in some kind of like really interesting dadaistic way.

LS: So who do you give credit to establishing the term "Beat?" Bob Kaufman or Kerouac?

AB: I mean that’s all media stuff. It doesn’t matter because it was the media that took it up. Okay? And the only Beat you could say of any value would be the beat of the music. I mean if somebody said beat is feeling tired, I don’t think nobody felt tired, unless Kerouac did for being on the road. Kerouac became an increasingly right-wing kinda spokesman. He was a very reactionary person. The more he drank and the more he just hung out with his Mama out here in Northport, he got further and further to the right. I couldn’t really stand him after a while. He was alright as kind of a young, gee-whiz white boy when I first met him. But if you read the stuff that he wrote, you know, the beginning — how did bebop start somebody hit a note and somebody did that — I mean all that kind of — you know, it’s like some kinda minstrel show caricature. I mean Allen liked him for whatever reasons, and you can say that Kerouac’s prose did somethin’ to shake up American letters, but as far as some sustained philosophical approach to whatever, that’s not there.

A lot of those people, I thought were terribly corny. You know like Gregory Corso, to me whose a — and Burroughs who’s just like a little contemporary Hitler figure — you know what I mean? I think that recent movie The Fight Club’s got a lot to do with Burroughsian Neo-Nazi fantasies. But those people, I never much cared for. I never much hung out with — I use to see Kerouac when he was with Ginsberg in the early days, but Allen — of all of those people, Allen was the only person I had any, what I’d call, any ongoing kind of relationship with. And some of the other people. Allen, Frank O’Hara — those are the people who I’d call friends of mine. Charles Olson. Ed Dorn. McClure’s a friend of mine. But a lot of those people I couldn’t really stand ’cause it wasn’t what I was thinkin’ about. Although, I would publish their poetry because it was in contrast to the academic poetry of the time.

LS: Can you talk about the importance of Black music to your life and work? I mean you’ve written what’s become a classic, Blues People, and then you’ve written another book called Black Music. But when you listen to Amiri Baraka as a listener, it’s very apparent about how much you are influenced by jazz and jazz musicians. Can you speak a little about that?

AB: Well, the music is always — I mean if you grow up — at least growin’ up like I did, in the middle of Newark, the music is everywhere. It’s in your house. It’s on the street. You go outside, it’s playin’ on the loudspeakers. It’s on the radios. All the parents playin’ it. You go to churches they playin it. And so the music has always been a fundamental kind of relationship with reality to me. With the life — not only reality, but reality as I would have it. Because the music is real, that is exists, but also the music is an enhanced version of reality. (laughing) It’s more beautiful than reality is certainly. It’s part of reality, but it’s an art that enhances reality. It makes it more rhythmic, more beautiful, more dynamic. And then I always thought that poetry and music were of the same fabric. You know, in Blues People I say first that the blues is a verse form first. You know, its poetry, you see, because it’s comin’ out of people’s mouths. But at the same time, then it connects with the — it has a musical kinda concatenation that, you know, projects it even into a broader kind of context of the world that I would project if I were creating a world. You know what I mean? It would be. And it’s the kind of a –it’s speech. I mean music is really speech. Really, I’m still working on a thing connecting notes to words — notes to letters, so that when you play music, you’re actually making a poem. And that has very interesting ramifications. If I finish doing it before they come out with it on some kind of — whadaya call that? — software (laughs). But — and then the life of the music. And then I told you when I was in college, Sterling Brown introduced A.B. Spellman and a couple of others, took us to his house and showed us his collection and said: "There’s your history right there." That’s really one of the most profound things that was ever said to me. That music is not just random kinds of performances.

But that taken as a whole is the chronological development of the Afro-American people. Social, political, geographical, aesthetic. And that had an impact on me. When I wrote Blues People, suddenly that idea came back very clear in my mind. Very clear! And that was my real theme of the book, that the music is the people. That is their history.

LS: Did your parents play that kinda music in your house growin’ up?

AB: Oh, yeah. My parents liked big bands. They liked Ella Fitzgerald. You know, they liked Ella and people like that. All that stuff was in the house. Nat King Cole was in the house. You know, they used to go to these dances all the time, hearing Lucky Malinda, people like that. And — ’cause the music was – and it was always those big bands were like jazz bands, blues bands. They had singers, they had dancers, they had comedians. Remember that? Those old blues — those old big bands that the people — my parents went to when they would carry the liquor in the bag and the Ritz crackers and food. Those were whole shows. Those big bands were whole shows. When you went to see, you know Erskine Hawkins, he had a man blues singer and a woman blues singer. He had a dancer or dancers. They would play small groups, they would sing straight out blues, then they’d do big band arrangements. So the whole music was in that. And that’ll come back!

LS: How does the Black vernacular, the speech of the people, the common speech of the people influence your work? When did you begin to think seriously about using that in your work?

AB: ’Cause that’s the way you — you know, if you were true, you know. See, it came to me — well, back in the 50’s-60’s-50’s, in the 50’s I had a book and the agent told me: "You can’t publish philosophy written in Black speech." Back in them days. But I knew to be truthful to myself as I began to write and get past the literary approach to literature and to the real question of human expression, I knew that to be able to say the things that I actually thought, I had to say them in the language that I thought ’em in. The language I thought ’em in was the language I grew up with — although we always were bilingual. All educated Afro-Americans and any kind of minority is bilingual. You speak American speech — it ain’t standard English, no matter what they might think — but also you speak the language that you grew up around. And so you’re able to shift back and forth very easily. Just like Puerto Ricans. They can speak Spanish. They can speak American.

They can go back and forth any time they want to. There’s no big thing. And then you start seeing, you know, Nuyoricans writing in a kind of a Spanglish they call it, which words are half English, half Spanish. Or you know, then they write in Spanish a couple of phrases and back to English. We have the same kind of capacity because we have the same kind of bilingualism historically.

LS: A final question: Amiri Baraka has gone through a number of manifestations, you know Beat writer, nationalist writer, Marxist-Leninist. Is this the final manifestation of Amiri Baraka, a Marxist-Leninist or do you think that one day , you might wake up and be something else?

AB: Well, I hope and I think somebody will always see that no matter what I thought I was doing, I was still trying to make revolution. And I think no matter what it is or what I call it, what it will be is it will still be about the transformation of society.

II.

Interview of February 2, 2003

LS: Today is February 2, 2003. My name is lamont b. Steptoe. I’m at the home of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of New Jersey and the Newark Schools. Amiri, this interview concerns the poem that you wrote called "Somebody Blew Up America." I first heard you read that poem in October 2001 on the campus of Temple University in Center City Philadelphia. I distinctly remember you getting a standing ovation.

AB: Right.

LS: It was your last piece. So you’ve been reading that poem for quite some time before the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival which seems to be the place where you began to run into problems.

AB: Well… but that reading was a standing ovation and I signed books for two hours and nobody complained. Ya, know… that’s why I keep asking… I mean three people came up to me — one was very kind but said to me, "I like the poem but I don’t know why you said that about four thousand Israeli’s?" But the two people who came after that I thought were actually "ringers," ya know they didn’t look like they would come to poetry readings, very slick up there in the woods. All they said was: "That was a very hateful poem!" There’s two things. First of all, I think it was a ploy of one kind or another because I was named Poet Laureate in April. I didn’t find out about it until May. They said it would be announced in June. It wasn’t announced until August. In September, I was busted.

But mainly, there’s two things. First, the poem questioned the role of Israel as part of 9/11 in terms of knowing about it. Which I knew, they knew about it. But second, and this is the most important and why the newspapers and the news people keep distorting it: We know Jews died in 9/11. We know American Jews died, like American Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Irish, Italians, Jamacians, etc. But the point is they keep saying the Israeli’s warned American Jews. No, no, no, that’s the point. Israel did not warn American Jews!

LS: Yeah, because the line says,

Why did 4000 Israeli’s stay away?"

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?

—from "Somebody Blew Up America"

AB: But they keep in the papers saying, I said they warned Jews. That’s not true. They warned Israeli’s! So out of three thousand people killed, the Israeli embassy says five Israeli’s died. Two of them died in the airplane. That’s five out of three thousand. So in the Star Ledger, whom I think I should sue, as well as these politicians because these people keep distorting what I’m saying… to say that Israeli’s warned Jews, no they did not and that’s the point: you see that American Jews have to find out that to Israeli’s they are American first! And that’s the point, that’s driving them crazy because see that suggest a relationship that they cannot stand you see. Israel’s chief lobbyist should be registered as an agent of a foreign power.

And to go further: Abraham Foxman, who’s at the head of this attack, this vicious person issued a press release last week saying that American Jews should not be afraid to make alliances with right wing Evangelical Christians even though they are anti-Semetic because they support Israel. He goes on to say, "Of course, we know these extreme rightist Evangelical Christians support Israel because they think this is the first stage of Armeggedon after which Jesus will come back and Jews will disappear." So now, if you can tell American Jews to make an alliance with that kind of religious anti-Semitic nut, than right there that proves what I’m saying.

LS: Is he an American?

AB: Foxman. He’s an American. He’s the head of the Anti-Defamation League.

LS: In New York?

AB: I think the ADL headquarters is in New Jersey. But still the point is that they are lobbyist for Israel. They do not want anybody to shred the disguise that has been set up by Bush and the media whores and themselves that Israel is the angelic victim and the Palestinians are the satanic terrorists.

LS: Can you talk about the creative process of you writing "Somebody Blew Up America?" I remember you told me sometime ago that you saw out your third floor window the towers in flames the morning of the attack. How long was it after you witnessed it did you write the poem? Did you do it in one sitting?

AB: Well that morning I was suppose to go to New York to campaign for Felipe Luciano. He was running for councilman in New York. Somebody called me and said, "Mr. Baraka, turn on your television!" I turned on the television and one tower was already burning. And just a couple of minutes later the other plane comes down and crashes into the tower. On our third floor, you could see the World Trade Center. We could see it smoking and burning for the next month.

LS: Were you looking at it live when it collapsed?

AB: No,no,no… I was looking at it on TV. This is the Hill. They call this the hill, Clinton Hill. So we are high over… you could see New York. But the point was it was such a terrifying image. At first, we thought it was an accident ’cause when I grew up as a kid a plane hit the Empire State Building. There was a hole in the Empire State Building for months. My parents took us to Radio City, the Roxy… we would see that hole, so at first I thought it was a similar kind of thing. But then that second plane came around. Then I knew it was war.

It’s a terrifying thing! But then after the initial terror, the kind of patriotic frenzy that Bush tried to whip up… terror, terror, terror, terror, war on terror! Then it occurred to me, now wait a minute. We can’t get that patriotic because first of all, we’ve always been in terror here. Second, anybody that flys a Confederate flag over Black people can’t have any respect for us. Now, they give Academy Awards to Hallie Berry, Denzel Washington, Sidney Portier and Whoopie Goldberg that’s nothing but recruitment for the war. They want you to believe your in it now… So it’s fake. That’s what set it off to me. This is a fake, fake, fake. Here’s a man last week came out against affirmative action, still at the same time, he would go the next day to a Black church.

Them Negroes need to have their mouths washed out with ammonia. But that’s what it was. What came to me was the terror’cause in the beginning, no thinking person likes terrorism whether domestic or international but we kind of let one cover the other. Then you see all that patriotic frenzy that we’re suppose to get involved in is supposed to make us eradicate the history of terrorism that we’ve been victims of. I even mention Trent Lott in that you know it was the Klan and indeed he was one of them. And as I got into it, then began to think of the people all over the world who suffered from various terrorism including Jews. I talk about the Holocaust. I talk about the Rosenburgs, Liebnecht, Rosa Luxemburg, that’s what I’m saying, to focus on those three lines is a despicable kind of viciousness that if you understand what they’re doing gives the who play away. Once you understand what their doing. Why they would only do those three lines in what is a 243 line poem. Why would they only take those three lines? But one thing is interesting. They never objected to the end line "Why did Sharon stay away?" But the point is this. I first got that from Israeli newspapers. Ha’aretz and Yadiot Ahranot.

LS: You went on line that same day and began to look for stuff?

AB: Around that time, I started looking around the end of September and early October. I started looking on line. Because the whole thing was spooky to me. The more I looked at it. Same thing Cynthia McKinney said.

This is the same ADL, which in league with the American Israel Political Action Committee, just a few weeks ago, sent millions of dollars into Atlanta, Georgia to defeat progressive Black Congress woman Cynthia McKinney, because she called for a more balanced American view of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.—Baraka News conference, Newark Public Library, Oct. 2, 2002

Why did the stock market stop trading in United Airlines and American airlines the month before? How can you take a plane up in the air and register a route and make a ninety degree turn and fly unchallenged over the most carefully guarded area in the world? You can’t do that, ya know? First you get radio communications. If they are not satisfied with that there will be some jets in your face. And then if you don’t go down right away, not only do they have jets that are going to shoot you down but they’ve got air missiles armed. You mean to tell me that you can fly an hour to the World Trade Center, another thirty minutes to Washington and not even be challenged? I said, wait a minute because I was in the Air Force. You got ten minutes! You make a ninety degree turn heading South, all kinda stuff is going to break loose! Why didn’t the media ask that? Because, we don’t have any kind of air defense. Some people need to go to jail because it’s in the budget! We’re paying millions of dollars for it! Why did Zim American-Israeli Shipping , the ninth largest shipping agents in the world break their lease, pulling out of the World Trade Center, the month before? A question of fifty million dollars! Now they are back in New York. What were those five Israeli’s doing on the Jersey side on top of a truck filming it?

LS: It seemed to be incredibly covered for an "accident." I mean, not an accident but for an attack. To actually have that many cameras filming it as it went down. I mean…

AB: How did they know to be there?

LS: Yeah, exactly!

AB: And then, not only were there five Israeli’s, I mean nationally… This story was covered by the Star Ledger twice (Newark’s paper) and by the New York Times. it was reported they worked for an Urban Moving Company that left the next day. They left so fast that the furniture they were suppose to move is still in the warehouse! It’s like bizarre! Ya, know, bizarre.

LS: So as you amassed these facts, the poem began to grow inside of you?

AB: Yeah, some of them I didn’t have yet. I knew about the five Israeli’s. I cut that out. Then I saw Al Watan, a Jordanian newspaper, and Manar-TV and website of the Israeli security force SHABAK. It talked about why Sharon stayed away. I mean ’cause that was Israel Day, 9/11 Israel Day. American Airlines. United Airlines. You understand. So I said, wait a minute. Then it become clear to me that they knew. That Bush knew. Then we find out that the English knew. The French knew. The Germans, the Russians…

LS: So when was the poem actually completed? When did you sit down and actually write it?

AB: The end of October. Then I sent it out on the internet. (note: the poem is dated Oct. 13, 2001)

LS: You wrote it in one sitting?

AB: The main body of it. Then I had to go back.

LS: You put it on e-drum?

AB: Yeah, e-drum. I sent it all over. But the point is, you know, I wrote that poem " Wise, Why’s Y’s" (a collection of Baraka poetry) it’s the same thing. It’s the question! It’s the question! It’s the question! It’s the question that’s actually the door to, you know, a vision! You say Who? K… K… K…

LS: So when did you get intimations of the poem creating a large disturbance with the powers that be?

AB: Well, people on the internet were asking me about that information. People would ask me, "Where did you get that and I would send it to ’em. But it wasn’t until the Dodge thing that it really became a monster. That’s because of ADL.

LS: It was interesting. I looked at a number of media events, a number of sources or venues talked about you and every single one of them just focused on these three lines. No one took any other part of the poem and talked about how you referred to the Jews suffering in the Holocaust, none of that - they just focused on those three lines. Every single paper across the board.

AB: The media is nothing but employees.

LS: Did Jim Habba (coordinator of the Dodge Poetry Festival) come up to you when you read the poem a second time and ask you to revise it?

AB: No, he came up between, after the first readings.

LS: Ok. What lines did he want you not to repeat?

AB: Those. He said they were pretty upset. First of all, I told him I was sorry, ya know, Jim he’s a good guy. Of those people… you were there right? You saw those people. Two readings. What was the reception? Overwhelming. Positive. But then, I set and signed books for two hours and only three people said anything. But then I knew when I saw those two people that they were "ringers" and that we were in for it. And then I knew something was up.

LS: What did you call them?

AB: Ringers. That’s an old expression that means people who really know what’s happening. Con men so to speak.

LS: So then the next day, after the Dodge, is when the story broke and the ADL came out labeling you as an anti-Semite?

AB: I think by the weekend it was out. There was a Friday front page story in the Star Ledger. The Governor’s secretary called me. He had a press release, he was going to release. I said, "What?" I said, "That’s the stupidest thing, I ever heard! Well, tell him this! I’m not resigning! I ain’t apologizing because he’s going for some bullshit!"

NO, I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE! In fact, I will continue to do what I have been appointed to do. Publicize and Popularize poetry and poets throughout this state. To set up new venues and new networks for poetry readings and workshops in the state’s libraries and schools and other institutions. —Baraka, news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct. 2, 2002

LS: Well, you told him initially when he first… the first time you guys met when you were given the mantel of Poet Laureate, you said to him what?

AB: I told him he’s going to catch a lot of hell, not based on that poem…

LS: Just based on who you are and your tradition?

AB: In 1967, they locked me up. They used a poem as the basis for it after the Newark rebellion. Reading this poem called "Black People." "This is a prescription for criminal anarchy!" As if Black folks ran into my house and read the poem before busting out windows! (laughter) Crazy stuff, man!

LS: Right. So then after you got that word from McGreevey that’s when you organized that press conference that I attended at the Newark Public Library to address these critics?

AB: Right. ’Cause then I could see what was happening. So then, I made a first statement. Then I made another statement two weeks later in New York at the Bowery Poetry Club that the Times printed because I wanted it to get outside of Jersey in a direct way. Because I know, for instance, that the fire at Sharpton’s place, the people in the Midwest don’t know nothing about that. I was in Iowa the other day. They don’t know nothing about that. So that’s why I did that, to put it in the New York Times. The Times was here this morning taking pictures. Apparently, they’re going to do a long story. I don’t know what they’re going to say.

LS: They sent a reporter to talk to you?

AB: The reporter came a few days ago. The photographer came today.

LS: Now, officially the New Jersey Legislature is going to abolish the position of Poet Laureate?

AB: That was the Senate. The senate voted twenty one zip. There was twenty people didn’t vote. Abstained. So, it ain’t like it seems. And the Black politicians actually defended my right to speak. Ya, know, the First Amendment. It will never pass the assembly. That’s my view.

LS: To abolish the position of poet laureate?

AB: Yeah. They can’t do anything to me.

LS: Right. You’re in for…

AB: It’s like impotent. It’s like making faces and making noises.

LS: But they still haven’t given you the money?

AB: Naw.

LS: They owe you ten thousand dollars for each of two years right?

AB: No, they owe me ten thousand dollars and two readings which will be about five thousand dollars each. So, they owe me about twenty "g’s". But this poetry series we’re putting on the poet laureate series, happily The Board of Education and library gave me the money. But now, that’s why I gave you that press release. Now, they’ve attacked this woman (Marion Bolden) who should be Superintendent of schools. They are going to remove her and put somebody from up in Connecticut… That’s what I’m doing now, writing a letter to people I know up there telling this guy to get the fuck out of here. It’s really coming from the Mayor, who thinks he’s Maximus Rex (laughter) who must control everything ( Mayor, Sharpe James).

LS: He’s been in office over twenty years, right?

AB: That’s right. It’s become, ya know, I think a kind of brain fever. After a while, he believes that everything he does and says is ordained!

LS: Has he issued any statements against you?

AB: No, he spoke in my favor. He’s a senator too. He’s defending me. In the senate, he defended me by saying, " Well, Fran Lawrence, said some bad shit, you know the President of Rutgers. They let him stay for five years and now they gave him a two hundred twenty thousand dollar job!"

LS: Yeah, Lawrence talked about how mentally deficient Black people were.

AB: Yeah, now he got a two hundred and twenty thousand dollar job after remaining in office five years after that!

LS: What is your relationship to Gerald Stern, now? I heard you on National Public Radio. I saw you on O’Reilly Factor as well. Stern is quoted as saying, "I think it’s a hateful poem." Has your relationship to Stern changed?

AB: I didn’t have a relationship with Gerald Stern. I met him for the first time up at the Dodge. I mean to me, though I would say this, he does support the First Amendment and he says they have no right to remove me, which is to his credit. But that’s the way those people, the quasi-intellectuals do it. They attack you aesthetically. They are not going to lower themselves to actually groveling before these political dementia. But at the same time, he’s gotta make some kind of aesthetic comment which is what they do generally. "Your shit ain’t no good!" I’m not gonna comment on that but I would say this: Whatever defects he thinks is in my work, I’m willing to accept that it don’t make any difference to me. You know because my work doesn’t depend on his approval.

LS: Now, this attack on you seems to be consistent with, well, New York University’s publication of that critical book by Jerry Watts (Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual).

AB: He’s an illiterate person!

LS: And the most vicious piece of journalism, I read was in the Wall Street Journal, early on. Did you see that piece in the Journal? The writer dug up your poem where you talk about stabbing Jews in the belly. The use of that poem has been consistent too, a number of venues have gone back to that particular poem.

AB: They can raise that because to me that period after they killed Malcom X, I can say it wasn’t just Jews, I hated all white people! So it don’t make no difference to me but at the same time, I also wrote a piece repudiating all of that! The Village Voice was so low, they printed a picture of me and Bill Kunstler (the now deceased activist and Civil Rights Lawyer who shot to national prominence for his defense of the Chicago Eight after the siege of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention), he’s a Jew, superimposed against the Auschwitz oven. So it’s been coming for a while. If you gonna put me and Bill there, it’s cool. I can accept that ’cause if you’re backward enough to put down Bill Kunstler, who was a Jew, who’s done more for the people than the ADL will ever do, it just suggests the narrow backward people that they are.

LS: Langston Hughes said, "Any publicity is good publicity!" and certainly you’ve gotten an incredible amount of publicity out of this…

The recent dishonest consciously distorted and insulting non-interpretation of my poem "Somebody Blew Up America" by the "Anti-Defamation League, is fundamentally an attempt to defame me. And with that, an attempt to repress and stigmatize independent thinkers everywhere. —Baraka news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct. 2., 2002

This is the same ADL who opposed Affirmative Action, even though many Jews benefited by the Civil Rights Struggle and the most notable white comrades in that struggle were young Jews. The same ADL that filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court brief) in the historic and reactionary Baake Decision which challenged and defeated the University of California’s affirmative action as "racist" and was explained by the ADL as its opposition to quotas. So that the university could now enforce a quota on Black students of none! —Baraka news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct 2, 2002

AB: I’m doing my job to encourage and promote poetry!

I have already gotten a great many communications praising the poem. A great many e-mails, letters and phone calls not only praising the poem and the poet for writing it but also opposing the attempt to violate my first amendment rights by this oft repeated ADL skin game of calling critics of imperialism anti-Semites. —Baraka news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct 2, 2002

LS: Exactly. I commend you for it. People don’t understand what poets are — we’re truthtellers and troublemakers and if your not stirring up the waters… I mean the late Gwendolyn Brooks said, "I’m tired of little tight faced poets, who craft perfectly little unimportant pieces. Poems that cough lightly. This is a time for BIG POEMS!"

AB: That’s right!

LS: And your poem was a Big Poem because it really resonated around the country if not the world! Have you gotten any overseas contact?

AB: Oh, yeah!

I have read this poem in Spain, Protugal, Africa, Switzerland, Italy, Finland and it was translated into German and read on German radio, at universities other venues across this country. It has become one of my most circulated poems. —Baraka news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct 2, 2002

LS: In what ways?

AB: It’s been read on German radio. I’ve gotten letters from everywhere you can mention, Japan, Egypt, etc..

LS: Other writers? What kind of people?

AB: Writers. Academics. Just people who’ve read it. ’Cause, I had sent the thing on the internet before. The thing is all over. So they peeped that a long time before and just waited for the time to do that. I don’t know. In the end, we will prevail. The people will prevail because more stuff is coming out. More stuff is going to come out.

LS: They say, "what is done in the dark will come to the light!"

AB: You got the FBI agents suing ’em. Four FBI agents who said, "we warned ’em and told ’em, we arrested Zacharias Moussoui and you didn’t let us subpoena his computer. We told you that there was too many of the Saudi’s down there studying airplanes." Then, you think Florida and San Diego. Wait a minute. Florida. We know who that is. That’s Jeb. (Bush, Governor). San Diego. That’s a Republican stronghold. La Jolla is an artificial city created by Richard Nixon. So wait a minute. The stuff is too funky. It’s too funky. Then you find out that some of those people whose pictures they put pictures of were the hijackers, who weren’t even there. Who are still alive and walking around in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Iraq. You gonna tell me that a guy goes on a clandestine mission that’s he’s gonna leave a copy of (chuckle) what is Islam holiest book in his car? You mean to tell me you could find the passport of one of the conspirators in the rubbish? I mean please, give me a break! You know you can just walk up to the rubbish and "Oh, here’s the passport of Mohammad Atta! I mean, Jesus! Or you could find a copy of the Koran in the goddamn airplane outside the Boston airport? You gotta do better than that!

Then, if you read some of these books by the guy who wrote that book, I can’t think of his name, By Means of Deception, he was a Mossad agent. He wrote a book after the first World Trade Center thing in the garage. Exposing that. That there was this Israeli woman who sucked this Palestinian into renting this truck. I mean it’s incredible! I mean when you look at it and you start reading the history of deception… that’s the slogan of the Mossad "By Deception You Can Start a War."

LS: What has been your support from the Afro-American community, the Black community? Black academics?

AB: Overwhelming! I mean across the board. Overwhelming!

LS: That list Prof. Clyde Taylor put together did that get published somewhere?

AB: We didn’t have the money to put out an ad but it’s been… I should have got some money. But it’s been sent to various people. I’ve sent it to the Governor and so forth and so on… But your right, it’s time to put all that stuff together, print a massive kind of thing.

LS: You had mentioned at your birthday party that you felt you and your family were in danger. What prompted you to say that?

AB: Well, because you can never tell what these fools will do. You can never tell. I know that in the last three weeks, two appearances of mine, one reading held in a high school and then the one the night before last up at an art show, I had a painting in, the fire alarm went off. I began to read a poem in the high school, the fire alarm goes off. Last night in the middle of the show they announce me and the fire alarm goes off. Three fire engines and shit.

LS: Didn’t something happen at Stanford when you and Teddy Harris where out at Stanford?

AB: Well, some guy wrote in the newspaper that I deserve to die a violent death!

LS: I mean there were protestors there. Weren’t they in the audience?

AB: They didn’t say anything! See their little punks. They sit up in there and listen and don’t say anything. They say questions, questions. No, they’re too punkish, too cowardly. That’s why they won’t put the the whole poem, because they are lying and their cowards! All these places… we had pickets out at Wellesley. They asked about two questions. The only thing they got angry with is when I read two poems. I told them that Schwartznegger and Tarzan were the same word. Tarzan means black, schwartznegger means black/black. I said, "I know you know what Schwartz mean…" "Are you saying that because we’re Jews, we know what Schwartz means?" I said, "If you spoke German you know what Schwartz means." It’s like silly. At Rider College, they had about ten people protesting. They said nothing. I had big security, where was that? Down in North Carolina. I had eight big white men with guns. Nobody said anything.

LS: Was that new for you?

AB: Well, for that kind of security. That’s done as a punitive measure against Black students. Because they not only have to get money to pay my fee and transportation. They have to get money for security! See that throws cold water on the event. That’s why they’re doing that. That’s the way these people work. But they refuse to face me. I said let’s go to a big hall and put the poem on a wall. Let’s go over it line by line. They will not do that because their cowards and their liars!

LS: This interview will appear in the journal Left Curve that has an overseas audience. What would you say to that audience that do not live on U.S. shores?

AB: I would say that the United States is not only contemplating, they are in the motion of trying to set up a military dictatorship over the whole world. Ten years ago, the question was universal disarmament. Now, they got the UN or United Nations trying to disarm people in a one sided fashion. When we talk about weapons of mass destruction, the United States got ’em. Pakistan and India, Italy ! A-bombs. Israel too! You understand. How is it that ya’ll can have all that stuff and nobody else can? And there’s a group around President Bush, they are called the White House fundamentalist that wrote this thing called Agenda for a New America or something like that… talks about Pearl and Wolfowitz, who are Zionist, staunch supporters of Israel, Rumsfeld, Cheney and some other people who say flatly, "This is the time, don’t let anything get in your way. Take the whole thing! And our children will praise us for it." They believe that they should make an absolute Pax America and create a military dictatorship. At first, I was saying it’s about oil, but no, it’s a little more insidious than that! The oil, that’s like…

LS: That’s the cover…

AB: That’s not the cover but that’s the basis. That’s the economic basis. If they get that they have an economic basis and with the military they have an actual dictatorship over the world. The Europeans understand that, you see. Germany and France understand it certainly. I think that some of these other countries… I can’t see Japan and China going for it. The British own half of this fuckin’ country anyway. They go along because they believe half of it’s theirs anyway. Now, here’s a country independent since 1776 still talking about "English departments".(chuckle) It’s incredible.

LS: The rest of the world has to understand that you’re in the tradition of Black people standin’ up and resisting!

AB: Afro-American artists… generally the whole political tradition but the artists themselves,whether your talkin’ about David Walker, Douglas (Fredrick), DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston… it’s always in the face of … Margaret Walker… it’s always in the face of… Langston… I mean DuBois wrote ten thousand magazine essays, you understand that… now if you read them essays… pow, pow, pow, pow, pow… I mean he wrote seventy five years, he lived to be ninety five… pow, pow, pow… look at that book of Jimmy Baldwin’s… where’s that book…?

LS: The Price of the Ticket! Yeah, it right there!

AB: Yeah, The Price of the Ticket pow… pow… pow… pow… He didn’t stop! That is the tradition! If you read Margaret Walker or Lorraine Hansberry, you know what I mean! And so I don’t feel at all outside the tradition but interesting enough, I’m very, very, dangerously, I guess the whole push by imperialism, by the powers that be, is to create a quasi-psyco tradition based on these little dime novel writers they pushin’ now. ’Cause they got some Negroes now comin’ out boy writin’ nothin’ but comic books without pictures! That and a whole lot of these little fake scholars. This Negro, Jerry Watts who says, "I don’t know anything about the Black Arts Movement but I’m sure Black people weren’t interested in it!" That’s some deep scholarship right there! Him and Crouch had a colloquium on me with the white dude who used to be the Chair of Black studies at Harvard. They make the white boy out like he’s the brilliant one. These two turds beatin’ me up… I mean it’s disgusting and its ridiculous because what do either one of them have to qualify them to say anything about anybody?

LS: I’ll never forgive Stanley Crouch! He was castigating Baldwin and Jimmy wasn’t even in the ground yet!

AB: Castigating him for what?

LS: About how all of his novels were flawed.

AB: Know who he likes? Joyce Carol Oates. See there’s a brilliant writer. Now, when Toni Morrison won the Nobel. They should have given it to Joyce Carol Oates! Now, see somebody like that man… some people actually believe there should be a hell!

LS: What are some of the new works you have coming out? You have a book of essays coming out?

AB: There’s a book on the music called Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music. It’s about fifty essays from the 80’s until now.

LS: What press is bringing that out?

AB: Something called Agincourt from Canada. I mean, I can’t get published by these other people. I have a book called Un Poco Loco coming out from I Reed Books from Ishmael. Then, I have a newer book called The Essence of Reparations coming out from a publisher in St. Martins. I have a bunch of books.

LS: Whatever happened to your book, Jesse Jackson and Black People?

AB: I’m suppose to be doing the proofs but the proofs to me are so insulting. This woman wrote all of these bullshit questions. She’s an ignorant person. I’m trying t figure out "Why do you think you know how to write? She don’t know nobody in the book. She don’t know none of the references. She don’t understand how I write. Have you ever written a book? (He’s asking her) That pissed me off so bad that I just stopped doing it.

LS: Whatever happened to your project with Max Roach?

AB: Max, ah… I don’t know. I can’t tell you. Max was not happy. I wrote two versions of it and I don’t think Max was happy with it. Because I don’t think he wants to be that person anymore. You now how that is, old people like myself and Max, a lot of stuff you did as young kids, somebody ask you about it, you might like blank on it. "No, I don’t remember that!" A lot of that stuff Max told me, I wouldn’t have known unless he told me. It’s some wild shit! I can agree there’s some wild shit in there!

LS: You can always fictionalize it.

AB: You remind me, I gotta call Max. That book needs to come out. But it’s just that Max does not want to face Max as he had been. He’s a rough customer!

LS: Finally, Quincey Troupe went through his own sort of troubles as Poet Laureate of California last year and I sort of heard through the word on the street that he blames you for what happened. (Quincey Troupe was removed as Poet Laureate of California last year, when it was discovered that had not graduated from Grambling as indicated on his resume)

AB: (laughing) Blames me! Well, Quincey said that when he published that poem of mine in a book. He was in some public place in Los Angeles and when he wouldn’t put me down then people got on his case. I told Quincey, I wouldn’t give a fuck if they got on your case. Tell ’em to go fuck themselves. He was not appointed as a college graduate. That’s not why… your not the College Graduate Laureate. And to me, that does a dis-service to artists because academics can never be in charge of ART! I mean what the fuck does a college professor know about me unless they’re writers and teach? To suggest, somehow, you have to graduate college to write a poem is like offensive. It’s offensive.

LS: But I mean like they took his job away!

AB: He gave it away! He resigned!

LS: Oh, I thought they asked him to leave.

AB: No, no, no. Well, he agreed. They said blah, blah, blah and he resigned. Quincey will tell you, he resigned. It’s his perogative to resign but I don’t think he should have resigned. Because to me, you didn’t appoint me because I graduated! So I lied about it. I’m sorry, I lied! Now, fuck you! I don’t have that respect for those institutions. They ain’t nothing to me.

LS: What would you say to future Black Poet laureates? Wherever they might emerge from states or your whole philosophy about states and taking money from the state? What would you say based upon what you’ve learned from this experience?

AB: Truth and Beauty. That’s your gig. Anything else, I ain’t even relating to that! If it ain’t about truth and beauty, I ain’t even relating to it! So you can say whatever you want to. You can jump on my toes. Try and starve me but I ain’t relating to that. There’s a whole lot of people poorer than me in the world and they makin’ it! That’s what I say. If it don’t have nothing to do with truth and beauty, I ain’t relating to it.

LS: Well, I’m going to say, thank you Amiri Baraka for fighting the good fight!

AB: Thank you.

We will ask that poets POET-ON! That they begin to produce at least one poem or publish a poem monthly, in the most modest forms, Kinko style and give them away if they have to. That they begin to set up readings not only in places we mentioned but also in parks and restaurants and in neighborhoods. —Amiri Baraka, news conference, Newark Public Library, Oct 2, 2002

lamont b. steptoe is an award winning poet born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA who now lives in Camden, NJ. He is the author of nine books of poetry including, American Morning/Mourning, Mad Minute, Dusty Road and In the Kitchens of the Masters. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies such as In Defense of Mumia, Aloud:Voices of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe,Spirit & Flame:A Contemporary Anthology of Afro-American Poetry, Brother-to-Brother, From Both Sides Now, Writing Between the Lines, In Search of Color Everywhere,and Bum Rush the Page.He is founder/publisher of Whirlwind Press and a Vietnam Veteran. He has read his poetry in Paris, France, Den Haag, Holland and Managua, Nicaragua.

The complete poem, "Somebody Blew Up America" is posted at:

http://www.themarcusgarveybbs.com/board/msgs/10788.html

Also see, Statement by Amiri Baraka,New Jersey Poet Laureate, 10/2/2002, I Will Not "Apologize," I Will Not Resign"!:

http://www.armiribaraka.com/speech100202.html