Who is Amiri Baraka

Amiri Baraka (born Everett Leroy Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.Baraka's career spanned nearly 52 years, and his themes range from black liberation to white racism. His notable poems include "The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues", "The Book of Monk", and "New Music, New Poetry", works that d...
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Amiri Baraka Poems

• An Agony. As Now.
  I am inside someone
  who hates me. I look
  out from his eyes. Smell
  what fouled tunes come in...
• Legacy
  In the south, sleeping against
  the drugstore, growling under
  the trucks and stoves, stumbling
  through and over the cluttered eyes ...
• Incident
  He came back and shot. He shot him. When he came
  back, he shot, and he fell, stumbling, past the
  shadow wood, down, shot, dying, dead, to full halt.
  ...
• Notes For A Speech
  African blues
  does not know me. Their steps, in sands
  of their own
  land. A country...
• A Poem For Speculative Hipsters
  He had got, finally,
  to the forest
  of motives. There were no
  owls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleys...

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Amiri Baraka Quotes

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