Sherry Chandler

What prophets a man to make himself a laughing stock

I’ve been linked by triggXR, a self-styled “postmodern redneck” from the Pacific Northwest. I wish I’d thought to call myself a postmodern redneck. Though I think I may be post-postmodern, I’ll put my redneck bona fides up against anybody’s.

triggXR refutes my three-year-old statement about Amiri Baraka. This is what I said back then:

Although there are places in the world where poetry is considered dangerous, the United States of America is not one of them. Somewhere, and how I wish I had an encyclopedic mind like that of Jack Higgs so that I could remember where, I read that in the United States poets are not silenced by opposition and suppression. Rather they are given all freedom and trivialized. Bought out, too, perhaps. Certainly all the dangerous rock anthems of the sixties have been co-opted by nostalgia and commerce. Poets come considerably cheaper.

Sam Hamill tried to make poetry dangerous when he refused his invitation to Laura Bush’s garden party and founded Poets Against the War. He’s still out there trying but I don’t think he was ever taken seriously as a voice of opposition. Certainly he hasn’t hit the same kind of chords that Cindy Sheehan hits. Amiri Baraka just managed to turn himself into a bit of a laughing stock.

Where is our Ginsberg?

triggXR doesn’t think much of Ginsberg:

Where is that pedophile Ginsberg when we need him to write war protest poems?

On the subject of Ginsberg and pedophilia, I refer you to Wikipedia.

I’m not sure I’ll be held accountable for anything I may have said three years ago, though it is the nature of a blog that it’s all still out there. We had just re-elected George W. Bush. I was not in a good mood.

To refresh your memory, the reference was to Baraka’s poem “Somebody Blew Up America,” which got him fired as the Poet Laureate of New Jersey because he bought into the rumor that the Jews had previous warning about the attacks of September 11. Though I despise George W. Bush and believe him guilty of war crimes, and though I think that Israel is making some big mistakes in its relations with Palestine (and vice versa), I do think Baraka had drunk the Kool-Aid on that one. Here is his defense.

On the other hand, I think that any artist (or prophet) who isn’t willing to make a fool of him/herself is more hack than artist. Artists play the fool. It’s part of what makes our wisdom unconventional.

If Baraka was a bit of a fool, the governor of New Jersey, Jim McGreevey, was a bigger one for deciding that he’d abolish the laureateship rather than allow Baraka to continue in it. We’ll give you the laurels but don’t step on our toes. That’s always been the way. Compare Horace to Ovid. Horace sucked up; Ovid was banished.

And didn’t anybody actually read the man’s work before they gave him the office?

Of course, McGreevey did some other foolish things.

There is also the question why Baraka didn’t seem to understand or else ignored the fact that a laureate is supposed to praise the state, not criticize it.

Okay, I’m wandering around and about my point here. triggXR says:

I’ve decided to highlight Baraka in this blog for a few days and look for the laughs.

I think we all ought to join her. You might also want to revisit my own postings of Baraka here and here.

Possibly related posts:

Terroristic Poetry

My letter to WUKY and other meanderings

More Dangerous Poetry

Literature’s stepchild

nth position for September 2007

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