"This is the enclosure (flesh,
where innocence is a weapon. An
abstraction. Touch. (Not mine.
Or yours, if you are the soul I had
and abandoned when I was blind and had
my enemies carry me as a dead man
(if he is beautiful, or pitied."
The style in which he writes could easily be percieved as melodramatic if it were written by another poet, but Baraka pulls it off with a certain grace that is vastly appealing. The line breaks and punctuation used are strange, but serve a purpose to emphasize the alliteration and sharp rhythms within the poem.
In another excerpt...
"I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women."
This one is much more simplistic than the last, but the symbolism is great. To describe himself as inside of himself, where the outer body hates the inner, holds a lot of metaphorical value as well as a strong image.
Though Amiri Baraka's poetry is pretty dark, it does much more than depress you. This is a great poem by a great poet.
im glad you decided to point out that second excerpt. I thought that was crazy too!! like, it makes so much sense, but i would have never ever thought to think of the inside of myself as being a different person than the outside. I dang sure wouldnt have thought that they could be enemies.... makes me want to look inside myself...or perhaps i should focus on looking out from the inside? who knows but yeah, that part really got me thinking so im glad to see im not the only one that got caught up on that part. I think you absolutely nailed it with the opening sentence of this blog. His stuff isnt what i would normally think of as my cup of tea, yet i wanna keep reading....
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A very depressing poem! I kinda had trouble reading it since there were so many hidden symbolic meanings in the poem. But once i understood what the symbolisms mean, the poem became elegant and a bit more enjoyable to read. The structure of the poem also added more confusions when i was reading it. I had to reread several times to get the gist of it. The second excerpt reminded me of Freud! His idea of unconsciousnesses, and how our inner thoughts are so different than our conscious thoughts.
ReplyDeleteThis one is quite more depressing than the "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note". I would believe that is more a suicide than the other one. I like the structure of the poem but it took me a couple reads to realize what was going on. This symbolism is a bit misleading depending on how you read it. I really enjoyed it though when I understood it. I do enjoy reading more darker stuff when it comes to poetry, or just any writing in general. I had never hear of this author before reading this poem, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
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