The Politics of Twentieth Century Poetry:
Amiri Baraka versus Allen Ginsberg
The poetry of Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Allen Ginsberg are example of how serious literary works can be used as a vehicle of social change. Both poets wrote during tumultuous times in American history. Ginsberg is primarily associated with the Beat movement of American poetry, in which poets used sprawling, freeform verse to criticize American capitalism and American values. Baraka is associated with the American Civil Rights movement, particularly with its most radical branches, which emphasized an eviscerating critique of racial relations in a society which claimed to support equality. Both poets made frequent use of literary allusions and derived new and innovative structures for their poems, rather than relied upon past conventions. But Ginsberg was more apt to favor more ironic and satiric tones in his poetry, versus Baraka’s frequently foul-mouthed, angry takedowns of white privilege from a heterosexual, male perspective.
In his 1969 poem entitled “Babylon Revisited,” Baraka deliberately invokes the image of the Whore of Babylon, a Biblical allusion, and fuses that image with an image of the United States. The title is also derived from the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited.” Baraka envisions a bestial creature slinking from Europe to America, a “gaunt thing/with no organs” (Baraka 1-2). America is envisioned as bankrupt of all morals, a place which creates an environment where African-American men will inevitably sink into poverty and drug addiction. Babylon, called the “great witch of euro-american legend” is said to have “sucked the life/from some unknown nigger/whose name will be known/ but whose substance will not ever” (Baraka 14-17) In other words, the intelligence and self-possession of black men are taken away from them by the American Babylon monster, leaving the dead man, “in a pile of dopeskin” (Baraka 19). The social mobility of America is mocked, rather all America does, Baraka suggests, is destroy America’s black youth.
Baraka’s poetry is also explicitly sexualized in his condemnation of the treatment of black men in America. American Babylon, after all, is explicitly envisioned as a woman, not as a man, and Baraka’s concerns are primarily about the emasculation and dispossession of men. “This bitch killed a friend of mine named Bob Thompson /a black painter, a giant, once, she reduced/to a pitiful imitation faggot,” writes Baraka (Baraka 20-23). Baraka’s harsh use of slurs for both gays and African-Americans are used to drive his point home. His stress upon naming also seems particularly pointed, given that Baraka renamed himself with an African rather than a slave name, like many black Muslims, and the poem itself is a renaming of America as Babylon, rather than a place that is the home of the free.
Baraka’s male sexuality is also referred to in his violent image of America, who is said to be so diseased (presumably with venereal disease) that she has sores on her insides but cannot give birth, and numerous plays upon the word “pus” and “pussy.” These refer to disease and to the female organ that is said to have destroyed...
Works Cited
Baraka, Amiri. “Babylon Revisited.” Poetry Foundation. 1959. Web. 24 Mar 2018. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42559/babylon-revisited
Baraka, Amiri. “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note.” Online Poems. 1969. Web. 24 Mar 2018. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baraka/onlinepoems.htm
Ginsberg, Allen. “Homework.” Poets.org. 1980. Web. 24 Mar 2018. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49311/homework-56d22b44cb0bd
Ginsberg, Allen. “A Supermarket in California.” Poets.org. 1957. Web. 24 Mar 2018. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/supermarket-california
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