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S O S: Poems, 1961-2013
A New York Times Editors' Choice One of the New York Times Book Review 's 100 Notable Books
Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka—"whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others" ( New York Times )—was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka's rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years.
Throughout Baraka’s career as a prolific writer (also published as LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history.
Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka—"whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others" ( New York Times )—was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka's rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished pieces composed during his final years.
Throughout Baraka’s career as a prolific writer (also published as LeRoi Jones), he was vehemently outspoken against oppression of African American citizens, and he radically altered the discourse surrounding racial inequality. The environments and social values that inspired his poetics changed during the course of his life, a trajectory that can be traced in this retrospective spanning more than five decades of profoundly evolving subjects and techniques. Praised for its lyricism and introspection, his early poetry emerged from the Beat generation, while his later writing is marked by intensely rebellious fervor and subversive ideology. All along, his primary focus was on how to live and love in the present moment despite the enduring difficulties of human history.
560 pages, Hardcover
First published February 3, 2015
88 people are currently reading
763 people want to read
About the author
Amiri Baraka
154 books396 followersPoems and plays, such as
Dutchman
(1964), of American writer Amiri Baraka originally Everett LeRoi Jones focus on racial conflict.
He attended Barringer high school. Coyt Leverette Jones, his father, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. Anna Lois Russ Jones, his mother, worked as a social worker.
He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. An anonymous letter accused him as a Communist to his commanding officer and led to the discovery of Soviet literature; afterward, people put Jones on gardening duty and gave him a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty.
In the same year, he moved to Greenwich Village and worked initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began in this period. At the same time, he came into contact with Beat Generation, black mountain college, and New York School. In 1958, he married Hettie Cohen and founded Totem Press, which published such Beat Generation icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
Jones in July 1960 visited with a delegation of Cuba committee and reported his impressions in his essay Cuba libre . He began a politically active art. In 1961, he published Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note , a first book. In 1963, Blues People: Negro Music in White America of the most influential volumes of criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning free jazz movement, followed. His acclaimed controversy premiered and received an Obie Award in the same year.
After the assassination of Malcolm X (1965), Jones left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem. His controversial revolutionary and then antisemitic.
In 1966, Jones married Sylvia Robinson, his second wife, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka. In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. In 1967, he adopted the African name Imamu Amear Baraka, which he later changed to Amiri Baraka.
In 1968, he was arrested in Newark for allegedly carrying an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the riots of the previous year, and people subsequently sentenced him to three years in prison; shortly afterward, Raymond A. Brown, his defense attorney, convinced an appeals court to reverse the sentence. In that same year, Black Music, his second book of jazz criticism, collected previously published music journalism, including the seminal Apple Cores columns from Down Beat magazine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka penned some similar strongly anti-Jewish articles to the stance at that time of the Nation of Islam to court controversy.
Around 1974, Baraka himself from Black nationalism as a Marxist and a supporter of third-world liberation movements. In 1979, he lectured at Africana studies department of State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1980, he denounced his former anti-Semitic utterances, declaring himself an anti-Zionist.
In 1984, Baraka served as a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure. In 1989, he won a book award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes award.
In 1990, he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 , he served as supporting actor in Bulworth, film of Warren Beatty. In 1996, the red hot organization produced Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip, and Baraka contributed to this acquired immune def
He attended Barringer high school. Coyt Leverette Jones, his father, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. Anna Lois Russ Jones, his mother, worked as a social worker.
He studied at Rutgers, Columbia, and Howard universities but left without a degree and attended the new school for social research. He won a scholarship to Rutgers in 1951, but a continuing sense of cultural dislocation prompted him to transfer in 1952 to Howard. He studied philosophy and religion, major fields. Jones also served three years in the air force as a gunner. Jones continued his studies of comparative literature at Columbia University. An anonymous letter accused him as a Communist to his commanding officer and led to the discovery of Soviet literature; afterward, people put Jones on gardening duty and gave him a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty.
In the same year, he moved to Greenwich Village and worked initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began in this period. At the same time, he came into contact with Beat Generation, black mountain college, and New York School. In 1958, he married Hettie Cohen and founded Totem Press, which published such Beat Generation icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
Jones in July 1960 visited with a delegation of Cuba committee and reported his impressions in his essay Cuba libre . He began a politically active art. In 1961, he published Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note , a first book. In 1963, Blues People: Negro Music in White America of the most influential volumes of criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning free jazz movement, followed. His acclaimed controversy premiered and received an Obie Award in the same year.
After the assassination of Malcolm X (1965), Jones left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem. His controversial revolutionary and then antisemitic.
In 1966, Jones married Sylvia Robinson, his second wife, who later adopted the name Amina Baraka. In 1967, he lectured at San Francisco State University. In 1967, he adopted the African name Imamu Amear Baraka, which he later changed to Amiri Baraka.
In 1968, he was arrested in Newark for allegedly carrying an illegal weapon and resisting arrest during the riots of the previous year, and people subsequently sentenced him to three years in prison; shortly afterward, Raymond A. Brown, his defense attorney, convinced an appeals court to reverse the sentence. In that same year, Black Music, his second book of jazz criticism, collected previously published music journalism, including the seminal Apple Cores columns from Down Beat magazine. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Baraka penned some similar strongly anti-Jewish articles to the stance at that time of the Nation of Islam to court controversy.
Around 1974, Baraka himself from Black nationalism as a Marxist and a supporter of third-world liberation movements. In 1979, he lectured at Africana studies department of State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1980, he denounced his former anti-Semitic utterances, declaring himself an anti-Zionist.
In 1984, Baraka served as a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure. In 1989, he won a book award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes award.
In 1990, he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 , he served as supporting actor in Bulworth, film of Warren Beatty. In 1996, the red hot organization produced Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip, and Baraka contributed to this acquired immune def
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
November 21, 2016
There's a hole in the literary landscape now that Baraka's gone. Provocative, political, improvisational and articulate, Baraka was a force in American letters and his work still reads as revolutionary and necessary. Readers are often familiar with what gets anthologized: the early Baraka, the poet of "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" and "An Agony. As Now" (the latter mistakenly listed in TOC as "As Agony. As Now"), the poems of internalized self-hatred ("I am inside someone who hates me") and painful reflection ("If I think myself strong, then I am not true to the misery of in my life"). Some readers surely know the story of "Somebody Blew Up America" and how it cost him the honorary title of Poet Laureate of New Jersey. But what this volume does is provide that great arc of development, the rich musicality and utter defiance of his formal and social presence on the page. "Yall don't know how, this shit works, he is saying (really) the commentator." Ah, but merely to quote is to ignore how his poems' presence on the page is an act of non-compliance. See it here in his "Lowcoup" (a form he invents as an African-American response to "haiku"):
Craziness is no
Act
Not to
Act
is crazinezz
In these times, when we are facing the catastrophic possibility of a Trump presidency (yes, I know he "won" the "election," but there's still so much to unfold before he assumes the office currently held by Barack Obama and who knows if we'll make it to or through the inauguration of this charlatan) we need poets like Baraka who will act up, who will wake us to the "Bush bastard's mouth" or the Nixon who "slobbers on the phone" or whatever rough beast slouches now out of the cesspool of American politics.
Craziness is no
Act
Not to
Act
is crazinezz
In these times, when we are facing the catastrophic possibility of a Trump presidency (yes, I know he "won" the "election," but there's still so much to unfold before he assumes the office currently held by Barack Obama and who knows if we'll make it to or through the inauguration of this charlatan) we need poets like Baraka who will act up, who will wake us to the "Bush bastard's mouth" or the Nixon who "slobbers on the phone" or whatever rough beast slouches now out of the cesspool of American politics.
August 1, 2015
I am speechless. Thank god he wasn't. Read it aloud.
Read
May 8, 2025you truly never know what you’re going to get on any given page of this: an achingly beautiful and sensitive revelation of love and heartache, a political call to action that makes you want to smash a cop car windshield with a baseball bat, or slam poetry bars written by a septuagenarian that imply George Bush and Dick Cheney are gay together. a cornucopia!
June 28, 2015
Excellent. You are never done reading a book.
December 27, 2023
S O S: Poems, 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka. Grove Press, New York, 2015
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
I first heard of this always challenging poet in 1970 during my first year of college, where I noticed a course, Introduction to Leroy Jones. I was busy, serving as media representative for the Anti-War Movement for the Community Coordinating Committee at De Anza College and trying to complete requirements to qualify as a transfer student for the University of California at Davis by Autumn 1971. I promised myself, I would find out who this was. However it did not occur to me it would take over half a century to complete the task. In all honesty, I was not ready, and now, well, here I am. Of course he became Amiri Baraka by the end of the decade, and passed on in 2013. So, this “Beige” poet finally completes that promise and this collection made a definite impact, shattering my aesthetic sensibilities, as well as on my journalism. No, it was not a comfortable experience, but it was not about the arguments within the verse. It was not about cuddling up with a good book to reinforce comforts or hidden senses of entitlement. It is about impact and Baraka’s ability to transform me and other readers or hearers of his work.
The poet as artist, IMHO, may be appraised by applying three perspectives:
Does the poet reveal his or her emotional and mental landscape? Who is this Leroy who became Amiri?
Does he challenge the hearer or reader to discover some meaning in the experience of listening to or reading the poems, hopefully with transformative effect?
Continuing the challenge, does the experience evoke an aesthetic impact?
The challenge for any audience with Baraka’s poetry is to listen to the creative flow and music of his verse. Oh, yes, it can entertain, but it may also shatter brittle-mental constructs we each gather, assemble, and come to depend upon as we pass through our worlds. Always the artist, Amiri Baraka wrote for an audience of one. He reveals his art to others. Then walks away towards the next gig.
Now I should take a look at him as playwright and see what he does with theme, setting, character development dialogue and impact!
Given my three concepts, did he reveal, challenge, and evoke? Notice, to allow Amiri to express his art, I had to be willing to surrender my expectations to appreciate or not appreciate it. My conclusion? After examining and attempting to reassemble the scattered shards of my inner self, after completing the audio book? ***** Five Stars! It took me over an hour to make up my mind about four or five, but in the end, my own transformation was much closer to Five Stars.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
I first heard of this always challenging poet in 1970 during my first year of college, where I noticed a course, Introduction to Leroy Jones. I was busy, serving as media representative for the Anti-War Movement for the Community Coordinating Committee at De Anza College and trying to complete requirements to qualify as a transfer student for the University of California at Davis by Autumn 1971. I promised myself, I would find out who this was. However it did not occur to me it would take over half a century to complete the task. In all honesty, I was not ready, and now, well, here I am. Of course he became Amiri Baraka by the end of the decade, and passed on in 2013. So, this “Beige” poet finally completes that promise and this collection made a definite impact, shattering my aesthetic sensibilities, as well as on my journalism. No, it was not a comfortable experience, but it was not about the arguments within the verse. It was not about cuddling up with a good book to reinforce comforts or hidden senses of entitlement. It is about impact and Baraka’s ability to transform me and other readers or hearers of his work.
The poet as artist, IMHO, may be appraised by applying three perspectives:
Does the poet reveal his or her emotional and mental landscape? Who is this Leroy who became Amiri?
Does he challenge the hearer or reader to discover some meaning in the experience of listening to or reading the poems, hopefully with transformative effect?
Continuing the challenge, does the experience evoke an aesthetic impact?
The challenge for any audience with Baraka’s poetry is to listen to the creative flow and music of his verse. Oh, yes, it can entertain, but it may also shatter brittle-mental constructs we each gather, assemble, and come to depend upon as we pass through our worlds. Always the artist, Amiri Baraka wrote for an audience of one. He reveals his art to others. Then walks away towards the next gig.
Now I should take a look at him as playwright and see what he does with theme, setting, character development dialogue and impact!
Given my three concepts, did he reveal, challenge, and evoke? Notice, to allow Amiri to express his art, I had to be willing to surrender my expectations to appreciate or not appreciate it. My conclusion? After examining and attempting to reassemble the scattered shards of my inner self, after completing the audio book? ***** Five Stars! It took me over an hour to make up my mind about four or five, but in the end, my own transformation was much closer to Five Stars.
July 26, 2022
I really enjoyed reading this collection. It’s fun to watch/hear/read someone’s growth throughout their artistic lives and S.O.S definitely gives that window into Baraka’s development. From his time around the Beat guys, to his break from that cage into Black nationalism, to his break from that into socialism/communism, AB clearly was a man that bled his heart through his pen. I got a lot of love, respect and admiration for the work he put in. Pick this book up!
October 8, 2020
**************** FAIR WARNING *******************
This review contains excepts on poems that contain profanity and racial subject matter.
*************************************************
SOS: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka is a collection of poetry spanning the author’s lifetime and reflecting his views particularly on racism. Baraka was a novelist, playwright, and a revolutionary African American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey surrounded by controversy. Baraka refused to step down, and, with no way to remove him from the position, the position was abolished by the state legislature and governor.
I grew up in a very segregated city of Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s and 1970s. It was not just a black and white segregation, but like most big northern cities even whites segregated themselves into neighborhoods by European heritage. I saw SOS as a way to try and learn what I was sheltered from growing up from a first hand source. I know there are histories written by both black and white authors, but I was hoping that the poetry would speak more to the personal feel than a socially acceptable history. Race in America is charged subject and perhaps a poet can capture it in a way we all can understand.
How amazed the crazed negro looked informed that Animal
Rights had a bigger budget
than the naacp!
~ The Heir of the Dog
SOS opens with a detailed introduction by Paul Vangelisti which is extremely helpful and informative. This is a difficult collection. I found myself struggling for the first half of the collection until the poetry moved into the late 1960s and early 1970s. My personal recollection of the time period helped me gain some traction. There is a reference to Rimbaud early on, but little else for me to relate to. Then suddenly there is Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford and a connection is made. Baraka is angry.
Dude asked Monk if he was interested
in digging
The Mother Land
Monk say,
“I was in the
Motherfuckin
Mother Land before
& some mother fucka
brought me over here
to play the
mother fuckin
piano….
You dig?
~Four Cats on Repatriationology
Baraka criticizes politics,economics,and the arts. He speaks with a frank and direct language.
The whimpering pigment of a decadent economy, slashed into
life
as Yeats’ mad girl plummeting over the nut house wall, her
broken knee caps rattling in the weather, reminding us of lands
our antennae do not reach.
~ The Politics of Rich Painters
He is equally critical and displays anger at all races in a reverse racism of Black Art. Black Art contains a violence of its own and a violence of poetry:
We want “poems that kill.”
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for
dope selling wops or slick halfwhite politicians.
Baraka leaves no stone unturned in his rage politics, class, and religion :
We’ll worship Jesus
When jesus do
Somethin
When jesus blow up
the white house
or blast nixon down
when jesus turnout congress or bust general motors to
yard bird motors
....
jesus need to be busted
we ain’t gonna worship nobody
but niggers gettin up off
the ground.
Not all is anger. Baraka like his music AM/TRAK speaks of Trane in a sharp play on trains and Coltrane. There is also a play on an angry Sisyphus who hates rock and roll because the gods who punished him created a band called The Rolling Stones, just to rub it in. If Elvis Presley was the king, then who is James Brown, God? The Beatles are not seen quite as favorably in Baraka eyes.
Baraka has sharp words and makes no attempt to hide his personal feelings. This is a rough collection of poems that resides outside polite society. It is for people, not just black, who see the construct of American culture and politics and realize it is not the clean and sanitary image that we are trained to see. The change we think we see is not always there:
Revolutionary War gamed
sold
out
The Tories still in control
of the culture
~There was Something I Wanted to Tell You
This review contains excepts on poems that contain profanity and racial subject matter.
*************************************************
SOS: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka is a collection of poetry spanning the author’s lifetime and reflecting his views particularly on racism. Baraka was a novelist, playwright, and a revolutionary African American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey surrounded by controversy. Baraka refused to step down, and, with no way to remove him from the position, the position was abolished by the state legislature and governor.
I grew up in a very segregated city of Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s and 1970s. It was not just a black and white segregation, but like most big northern cities even whites segregated themselves into neighborhoods by European heritage. I saw SOS as a way to try and learn what I was sheltered from growing up from a first hand source. I know there are histories written by both black and white authors, but I was hoping that the poetry would speak more to the personal feel than a socially acceptable history. Race in America is charged subject and perhaps a poet can capture it in a way we all can understand.
How amazed the crazed negro looked informed that Animal
Rights had a bigger budget
than the naacp!
~ The Heir of the Dog
SOS opens with a detailed introduction by Paul Vangelisti which is extremely helpful and informative. This is a difficult collection. I found myself struggling for the first half of the collection until the poetry moved into the late 1960s and early 1970s. My personal recollection of the time period helped me gain some traction. There is a reference to Rimbaud early on, but little else for me to relate to. Then suddenly there is Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford and a connection is made. Baraka is angry.
Dude asked Monk if he was interested
in digging
The Mother Land
Monk say,
“I was in the
Motherfuckin
Mother Land before
& some mother fucka
brought me over here
to play the
mother fuckin
piano….
You dig?
~Four Cats on Repatriationology
Baraka criticizes politics,economics,and the arts. He speaks with a frank and direct language.
The whimpering pigment of a decadent economy, slashed into
life
as Yeats’ mad girl plummeting over the nut house wall, her
broken knee caps rattling in the weather, reminding us of lands
our antennae do not reach.
~ The Politics of Rich Painters
He is equally critical and displays anger at all races in a reverse racism of Black Art. Black Art contains a violence of its own and a violence of poetry:
We want “poems that kill.”
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for
dope selling wops or slick halfwhite politicians.
Baraka leaves no stone unturned in his rage politics, class, and religion :
We’ll worship Jesus
When jesus do
Somethin
When jesus blow up
the white house
or blast nixon down
when jesus turnout congress or bust general motors to
yard bird motors
....
jesus need to be busted
we ain’t gonna worship nobody
but niggers gettin up off
the ground.
Not all is anger. Baraka like his music AM/TRAK speaks of Trane in a sharp play on trains and Coltrane. There is also a play on an angry Sisyphus who hates rock and roll because the gods who punished him created a band called The Rolling Stones, just to rub it in. If Elvis Presley was the king, then who is James Brown, God? The Beatles are not seen quite as favorably in Baraka eyes.
Baraka has sharp words and makes no attempt to hide his personal feelings. This is a rough collection of poems that resides outside polite society. It is for people, not just black, who see the construct of American culture and politics and realize it is not the clean and sanitary image that we are trained to see. The change we think we see is not always there:
Revolutionary War gamed
sold
out
The Tories still in control
of the culture
~There was Something I Wanted to Tell You
February 24, 2016
O My. Because.
*
So for us to have been together, even
for this moment
profound like a leaf
blown in the wind
to have been together
and known you, and despite our pain
to have grasped much of what joy exists
accompanied by the ring and the peal of your
romantic laughter
is what it was about, really. Life
Loving someone, and struggling
*
So for us to have been together, even
for this moment
profound like a leaf
blown in the wind
to have been together
and known you, and despite our pain
to have grasped much of what joy exists
accompanied by the ring and the peal of your
romantic laughter
is what it was about, really. Life
Loving someone, and struggling
September 29, 2015
He is missed on this turf. Consistently challenging (and consistently challenging himself), he lived in the world.
September 16, 2017
Back to it and back to it and back to it. 20th century American poetry pushing the boundaries...
July 31, 2019
An exuberant, impassioned testament to justice, love and joy. This is the kind of work that ages really well, with the passage of time serving to point out how much work still needs to be done regarding capitalism, racism, exploitation, et al. Baraka is constantly taking risks, you get the sense, always pushing himself to explore the possibilities of what poetry can be and where it can go—I'm talking with syntax, punctuation, imagery—consistently testing the limits of his readers as if daring them to stay with him, to keep an open mind and soak in the text, ponder it, go back and reread it if necessary (which I did often; I had to!). The whole book is inspired and inspiring. A standout part is the final section, which Baraka actually performed in speech to live music and put it on vinyl, and here it is put into writing for the first time. For one thing—Harmony Holiday's intro to this section sent me. I had chills reading it. Then the poems begin and this work is both vivid and creative to the extreme, filled with chants, messages, invocations, pronouncements. The struggle is right there adjacent to peace; it all is a kind of movement, and like all wonderful work, harkens back to the great artists that came before him.
February 18, 2025
ok i am back to review things! i read these poems back in january. i think baraka is quite regularly brilliant throughout this collection even though i prefer the latter, more marxist half. but that in itself is a good argument for historical progress! you need one for the other. one throughline i'm still reckoning with is poetry/art as necessary distractions over the pitiful, brutal core of aesthetics (i do not think the answer could be that within poetry is the space to resubsume or resist the pull of beauty). another was the political leveling of love. i think baraka is an unsung thinker of love and its prices.
"and so the seasons, they tell us / are more important, than ourselves / flies and starlight, all the little / things." it's so devastating! of course this is what all songs ever have told us. including baraka's, in a way!
Another crawl on the floor level of clarity here "we take / unholy risks to prove / we are what we cannot be."
"and so the seasons, they tell us / are more important, than ourselves / flies and starlight, all the little / things." it's so devastating! of course this is what all songs ever have told us. including baraka's, in a way!
Another crawl on the floor level of clarity here "we take / unholy risks to prove / we are what we cannot be."
January 6, 2020
DNF at 45%.
I respect Amiri Baraka and understand the importance of his work, his contributions to Black literature, theatre, and poetry, his role as a Marxist poet, but I absolutely cannot stand beat poetry, and that's what this was: 200+ pages of beat poetry. I can't do it. Over 200 pages into this, you've gone through roughly 35 years of his poetry, and it doesn't change. Sorry Amiri, but I can't.
I can see the influences of Frank O'Hara as well, which is more so proto-beat, but that doesn't salvage this either.
I respect Amiri Baraka and understand the importance of his work, his contributions to Black literature, theatre, and poetry, his role as a Marxist poet, but I absolutely cannot stand beat poetry, and that's what this was: 200+ pages of beat poetry. I can't do it. Over 200 pages into this, you've gone through roughly 35 years of his poetry, and it doesn't change. Sorry Amiri, but I can't.
I can see the influences of Frank O'Hara as well, which is more so proto-beat, but that doesn't salvage this either.
September 15, 2024
read this behemoth cover to cover over the summer and it has probably affected my creative output more than any other single poetry book has since reading New York school anthologies when I was like 20. Baraka is just endlessly impactful and entertaining in his writing, even when these should really be heard rather than read
December 5, 2025
Many of the poems in here didn’t resonate with me, but when they did, whew! Some of the political poems especially were derogatory to the point of feeling vulgar, but others like “Somebody Blew Up America” dive straight into the marrow of what is wrong in our country. I’d love to study this in a college course.
February 11, 2022
I took my time with this huge book, and let it sink in. It's a crucial contribution to leftist American poetics, and Black poetics, and beat/jazz poetry largely... I wish the poems each were timestamped, but otherwise I find no flaws here, and look forward to keeping it in my collection.
February 27, 2018
could be even more thoroughgoing. 4star
May 2, 2018
Excellent, especially the earlier stuff.
February 21, 2019
A lot of chaff with some wheat thrown in. I actually love his play "Dutchman" better than any of his poetry, and the shame of it is, he's far better known as a poet than a playwright.
April 3, 2019
Troubling, perfect, heartbreaking.
I'm confused by the way poems are left out but honestly Baraka's preface makes it worth it.
I'm confused by the way poems are left out but honestly Baraka's preface makes it worth it.
May 24, 2019
If you want to read the poetry of Amiri Baraka, this is the collection you should go for. A fantastic edition.
July 21, 2019
Don’t know jack about poetry, but this made no sense to me. I’m sure that is mostly a reflection on me. Did not move me an inch.
February 14, 2020
Insightful. Thought-provoking. Moving. Still relevant in many ways. I very much appreciated this book of poetry and the ways in which it challenged my way of thinking, reading, and interpreting.
May 17, 2020
Genius African American Poetry of the 60s-2010s. RIP Amiri Baraka.
January 6, 2022
Amiri Baraka remains the king of performing and writing poetry into a frenzy. His words speed the heart and boil the blood. He was a king.
July 19, 2022
This will always remain a reading and listening experience unlike any other. Intricate content, really uncomfortable at times, yet must not be dismissed as anything less than a fruitful collection.
August 11, 2022
"All the lovely things I've known have disappeared."
March 5, 2024
This collection of poetry is from a generation of poets that truly defy so many conventions.
He’s a genius and writes about everything from racism, beauty, love, art, struggle and so much more.
He’s a genius and writes about everything from racism, beauty, love, art, struggle and so much more.
May 30, 2025
2.5/5 stars
I can understand why poets study him, I really do. He is very influential and I think I can say most modern poets are impacted by his poems, style of poetry, and how he reads his poems. That being said, his poems for the most part are not something I would read outside of studying him. There are a few that are just excellent that I might return to, but overall I was uncomfortable while reading most of his writing, which I think it part of the point of his writing. But I was also confused on some of his poems. Rating this was hard.
I can understand why poets study him, I really do. He is very influential and I think I can say most modern poets are impacted by his poems, style of poetry, and how he reads his poems. That being said, his poems for the most part are not something I would read outside of studying him. There are a few that are just excellent that I might return to, but overall I was uncomfortable while reading most of his writing, which I think it part of the point of his writing. But I was also confused on some of his poems. Rating this was hard.
March 5, 2016
When I read poetry, I usually find one or two poems that are my favorite. For T.S. Eliot, it is "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." For e.e. cummings, it is "anyone lived in a pretty how town." For Amiri Baraka, it is "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note."
I discovered LeRoi Jones (as Baraka was then known) in the late 1960's while in college. I read the Dead Lecturer cover to cover and still have the paperback book on my shelves. So I was very excited when I discovered this collection of his lifetime work. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. It took me over a year to get through this book and then I had to skim read the last half. Sure, I can pick out lines that I liked, but I felt most of the poems were inaccessible. Or it might simply be my inability to comprehend.
Having spent years reading and writing poetry, I am satisfied when I find one poem by a poet that touches my heart. "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" is such a poem. And my one wish is that some day when I am long gone from this world that someone will be touched by ONE of my poems.
I discovered LeRoi Jones (as Baraka was then known) in the late 1960's while in college. I read the Dead Lecturer cover to cover and still have the paperback book on my shelves. So I was very excited when I discovered this collection of his lifetime work. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. It took me over a year to get through this book and then I had to skim read the last half. Sure, I can pick out lines that I liked, but I felt most of the poems were inaccessible. Or it might simply be my inability to comprehend.
Having spent years reading and writing poetry, I am satisfied when I find one poem by a poet that touches my heart. "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note" is such a poem. And my one wish is that some day when I am long gone from this world that someone will be touched by ONE of my poems.
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