LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature
University of Houston-Clear Lake, spring 2003
Poetry Presentation Summary

"An Agony. As Now"

by Amiri Baraka

Poetry Presentation by Alcira Molina

Almiri Baraka was born LeRoi Jones, in Newark, New Jersey, in 1935, and is an outrageous and highly unique individual who is still alive today. After brief stints at Rutgers and Howard, Baraka joined the Air Force.  Throughout Baraka’s life, he has changed names, addresses, political affiliations, and wives, but his core has remained true to defending justice and fighting for the oppressed---not only the African American population in the US but also minorities around the world. Baraka has always been controversial and outspoken. He first married a white Jewish woman and lived in New York in the Greenwich Village area, joining the jazz and Beat movement. He then decided to follow the Black Nationalist movement and moved to Harlem, divorcing his white wife. During this time he wrote experimental plays and opened a theater school. In 1968, Baraka changed his name to adopt a Muslim name and later went on to embrace Communism. Baraka was last in the news after presenting a controversial poem about 9/11 upon being nominated poet laureate of New Jersey.  Baraka now teaches at SUNY. 

Discussion:

Alcira:  The poem was difficult and there are contrasts between light and dark, cold and hot, wet and dry.  The poem may be about a black man inside of a white man's body.  There is a metallic feeling that is hard and oppressive about certain verses. There is also a great deal of pain and rage unmasked and transmitted by the poet. 

Ginger:  Hate and love are present.  I connected both as I read it.  Flesh is being used as a weapon.  There is an obstruction and the man cannot look past it.  Is the obstruction color or who you are inside?

Rosalyn:  This was a Muslim period.  Malcolm X defined who you were and this is an angry poem and the person seems to be looking for something more.  The whole poem emphasizes something beyond the physical.

Alcira:  W.E.B DuBois' remarks about the poem include "…narrates the experience of Black man." 

Dr. White: Remarkable to hear W.E.B DuBois responding to this poem, but he lived a long time, perhaps to be 90 or so. 

Alcira:  The speaker observes through slits---the oppressor’s greatest weapon is the white societal view of subjugation. 

Thania:  He is asserting that he is not at peace with it.  This representation lends itself to situation of another group of people that have had discrimination against them, and that group is homosexuals and gays.  However; they have the option of being able to "blend in" or "pass"  and so therefore they should not be counted as a minority group.  Other minorities cannot disguise themselves, and should be afforded the protection of the 14th amendment, but gays and homosexuals should not.  The person in the poem cannot transcend his state, much like women and African Americans.  I brought this up because of objective two.

Dr. White:  She is making an analogy to parties that are often misrepresented or ostracized.  There is an agony that you just keep feeling…like you will break through.

Alcira:  Seems like a veil

Dr. White:  or whether it can be slits with light coming in?

Alcira:  The eyes inside of the body as armor.

Rosalynn:  The movie "Birth of a Nation" contains a scene in which there is a conflict between a KKK member and a woman, and the man is asking the woman to marry him, and the woman responds by jumping off of a cliff.

Alcira:  The poem is open to interpretation. Slavery and the Emmett Till incident, as well as rape and murder are all different underlying suggestions.

Dr. White:  Is there anything in the poem that suggests the race of the author?

Class:  Emphatic "NO!"

Dr. White:  There may be a self-hatred if you don’t know that attitudes are transferable.

Alcira: Baraka was very influenced by the Black National movement.

Dr. White:  Baraka is always controversial and was made the poet laureate of New Jersey, maybe in an attempt to make him respectable. 

Dr. White:  The poem written after the 911 attacks includes references to ugly times in America's past, and it repeats Internet rumors of Zionist conspiracy theories, etc…

Robert: It was really controversial and contains references to Jews and why they did not show up for work on the day that the WTC was attacked, as though they were in on the secret and are part of terrorism.

Dr. White:  Yes, I believe the line is "Why did they not show up for work that day?" 

Alcira:  The whole poem is shocking.

Dr. White:  I saw him speak at a historically Black college in North Carolina, and I thought, "Wow, if he were at a non-historically Black college, the people would have marched out." 

Jana:  He's against religion and God, I gather?

Elizabeth:  Nation of Islam and Muslim religions are different.  The Black Nationalist movement is an anti-white and pro-Black movement.

Dr. White:  Farrakhan is the contemporary figure most associated with that movement today, but we have not heard much from him because he is ill.