New Jersey Poet Lauriate, Amiri Baraka, Won't Resign Post.

Wednesday October 02, 2002 21:32

by Mr. Green

New Jersey Poet Lauriate, Amiri Baraka, won't resign post over furor caused by his poem in which he implicates Israel & Bush for 9/11

N.J. poet laureate won't resign over 9/11 poem
By Matthew Purdy
THE NEW YORK TIMES
NEWARK, N.J. - Just before Gov. James E. McGreevey introduced Amiri Baraka last
month as New Jersey's new poet laureate, the celebrated and controversial activist writer
said he warned the governor this might happen.
"I said, 'Governor, you're going to catch a lot of hell for this,' " Baraka said. "He said, 'I
don't care.' I said, 'If you don't care, I don't care.' "
Baraka still doesn't care.
But the governor suddenly does. Political turmoil has found the last virgin turf in New
Jersey public life: the poet laureate.
The governor has demanded that Baraka resign because a poem he read at a poetry
festival 10 days ago said Israel had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks. Baraka is
refusing to resign. The governor's aides say McGreevey lacks the power to remove
Baraka, since he was selected by a committee of poets and cultural aficionados. That
group has obtained a legal opinion saying it can only select, not oust, laureates.
Besides, poets are usually ignored, not censored. "A sticky wicket," said a statehouse aide,
apparently practicing for the laureate's job, should it open up.
In his offending poem, titled "Somebody Blew Up America," a litany of massacres and
oppression, Baraka refers to five Israelis filming the attacks, and asks:
"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?"
"Terrorized for years"
In an interview Thursday, the day before the governor demanded his resignation, Baraka
was unrepentant. The artist formerly known as LeRoi Jones has had so many phases -
Greenwich Village beatnik, Harlem black nationalist, bloodied warrior of the 1967
Newark riots, Marxist, critic of Newark mayors - that he seemed unfazed by the rocky
start of his laureate phase.
Told that he offended people, he said: "I know. What can I do? I'm not perfect, alas."
Reading the Internet convinced him that Israel knew about Sept. 11 beforehand.
"Obviously they knew about it, like Bush knew about it," he said. Espousing a theory
popular in parts of the Muslim world, he said the White House let it happen to get "carte
blanche" to have its way with Afghanistan, Iraq, the rest of the Middle East.
President Bush knew in advance? "Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely."
And Baraka added: "So did the Russians, so did the Germans. Why do you think investors
sold their stock in United and American Airlines the month before?"
Baraka's career at the keyboard and on the street has been guided by the view that the
powerful conspire against the powerless. "Terrorism," he said. "Black people. We've been
terrorized for years. There's been no alert to stop the KKK and the skinheads."
Suspicious of power
Over the years, Baraka has been lauded and accused every which way. The American
Academy of Arts and Letters called him "one of the most important African-American
poets since Langston Hughes" when it inducted him last year. He pleads guilty to the
communist label and said he regrets his early anti-white writings. In 1980, he wrote a
self-defense titled "Confessions of a Former Anti-Semite."
Baraka, 67, gray and slightly hunched, holds court in a large house in a faded Newark
neighborhood. His suspicion of power oozes from every pore.
His selection as laureate honored his strong voice, long career and prominence. The
committee chairwoman, Judith Pinch, said that the group felt he could promote poetry
among city youths and that "his strengths outweighed some past reputation for being
slightly outrageous."

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Comments (4 of 4)

poets and censure

by o as if = iosaf - reclaim the streets & genome for peace

Wed Oct 02, 2002 21:49

billions at no dot tv

on the streets

I wish I could agree that poets rarely are censured but often they are.
I in this place "indymedia ireland neutral zone cyberspace" often refer to
Christopher Daybell
poet, pamhpleteer, anarchist and personal friend.
He wore censure in many forms.
He wore jibes and insults.
He bore interogation from the "special branch" on several occasions.
The last occasion of such interogation concurred with information he had been privy to circulating amongst the Dublin underground community and beyond on the falsification of beef data.
Maybe attentive older readers will recall the cows for Iran scandal.
Many artists throughout the world not only predicted Sept 11 as "an enabling act" event but since then have ensured through their creative labour that the "greatest of lies" shall not go un-punished.
Poetry and Art have always been amongst the most potent of revolutionary weapons.
The reclaim the streets! activist John Xavier writing for the University of Salamanca publication "art and critical discourse" published last year pointed out the relationship between "Art actions" and revolutionary "catylistic" change.
Has anyone yet forgotten the grass mohicon on Winston Churchill´s head?
The world is your stage
the earth is your canvass
the walls cry out for truth
Ireland has a little referendum to vote NO to.

good poet / ugly lies

by i hope

Wed Oct 02, 2002 22:49

i hope everyone reading this knows that 'Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers To stay home that day' is a totally anti-jewish lie/hoax/disinfo whatever you wish to call it.

there is no truth to this rumor.

sad to see a good poet spread ugly lies

Lies? Are you really sure?

by MIchael

Thu Oct 03, 2002 04:46

I don't whether the 4000 Israelis staying home is true or not, but the Israelis who were cheering and taking photographs as the World Trade burned was extensively covered in the Israeli newspapers and can be found in Haaretz archives. Neighbors called the FBI because these guys were cheering as the towers burned. It's also fact that 200 Israelis thought to be spies and passing themselves off as "art students" were around the U.S. before 9/11 and some were just down the street from the guys taking flight lessons in Hollywood Florida (a VERY small obscure location). One could wonder why ANYONE would be cheering, and one could wonder why with all the locations in the U.S. these "art students" were in Hollywood Florida? One could also wonder who "won" because of the world trade? Israel or the Arab countries?

yes, MIchael

Thu Oct 03, 2002 10:34

MIchael

what you wrote is true - but it should not be too surprising.

Yeah there are Israeli Mossad spies in the USA, that has been known for some time.

And that they would cheer when they have further entangled the US into the Middle East mess is not surprising - although there still is not a full explanation of that scene.

there's a lot we don't know about 11 Sept, but this 4000 Israelis garbage just gets in the way of a more interesting truth that has yet been revealed.

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New Jersey Poet Lauriate, Amiri Baraka, Won't Resign Post.

Comments (4 of 4)