Amiri Baraka's "Getting Less & Less Safe Out Here" (The Baffler Pulled It, Last Minute)

Aldon Lynn Nielsen in Wuhan, China, talking about Baraka. 

Getting Less & Less Safe Out Here
(Tin Tin Deo, Diz)

                               by Amiri Baraka

The world is less safe
without Hugo Chávez, imagine not, reality
Is ill enough. The world
Is less safe
Without the poets Jayne Cortez, or Louis Reyes Rivera,
Or Sekou Sundiata
much less safe without Arafat or Rabin,
A much more dangerous place
We in, with mouths closed by death, assassination. With
Chávez
We wonder is it the planet’s imperialist police
That killed him, like Arafat, some secret ugly
Shit, like you know they got
With Malcolm and Dr. King
The crazy white folks was screaming so loud
They shd die, there was even some negro zombie preacher
In Chicago, boy, joined with them at the hip
Who screamed and hollered and wallowed
On the sidewalks, they wanted to run Dr. King’s street
In front of his dope dispensing south side joint.
But Chávez, I swear I think
They killed him. Some kind of death ray white
poison like they slipped Arafat. With Cabral and Biko
The animal sounds of the racists
Allowed them to shoot straight out,
They cd take off Touré with the “gone to Europe
For medical treatment” tip
but Chávez I know they killed, Ditto
Arafat. Imagine
Rabin being stalked by a right-wing Israeli nut
A Patriot, Lieberman or Netanyahu might say, imagine that
The cries from money and a new edition
Of white supremacy canceled out opposition.
They tried to get Fidel for so many years
But Fidel being Fidel walked through the flail
with the wail of an organized people, and they failed
But Chávez, we gotta know
Imperialist death science is my feeling
They always either killin or stealin

____
Amiri Baraka, 2014. The Baffler (pulled before publication).

Amiri Baraka, 1934 to 2014

I have/had the proof page / pdf of this poem as it was to be published in The Baffler. Classy layout! The Baffler pulled the poem at the last minute due to concerns ("concerns" my rear end). I suppose they were worried there'd be a reaction similar to the massive misunderstanding about Baraka's poem, "Somebody Blew Up America." I was at the Dodd Poetry Festival when he read that poem and witnessed a few angry people pop up, out of their seats. It was a thing, is all I can say, which snowballed into ignorance and hatred, as if Roy Cohn or J. Edgar Hoover were the alive and kicking thinkers. Baraka was stripped of his very new position of Poet Laureate of New Jersey. A shameful time in poetry history.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, then Poetry Editor of The Baffler, offered to email the pdf to any who requested it and since I knew Ellis, by way of friends, from a few parties, and through our emails about Baraka, I asked and promised to post. And so. S.S. 2014. (Edited 2020)

Change the Game: Thomas Sayers Ellis tellin' it (new rules for poets, publishing, living)




The Vedic Trimurti

 So I got permission for this posting, this cut 'n paste of truth, of all that and the shining light of we don't have to buy into their rules. (My words, so far, my italics. If you know anything of Thomas Sayers Ellis, you understand I am staring in the face of stark relentless loving hipiocity, coooooooolnez, unplugged boppin' and I'm not up to the task but am taskin' anyway.) 

TSE posted these rules in the other order, you know, the countdown order. Hey, stand on your head and read and it'll all work out. Thing is, things gotta change.

Thing is, being angry is static. Change comes from movement.  The change here is in the publishing, poetry, fictionizing scene which need to be dragged on the dance floor and showed new moves. As Thomas Sayers Ellis says, believe all of it and nothing.

Change the Games Rules
as dictated by merciful angels of the great beyond which is here and now 

to
Thomas Sayers Ellis

Change the Game Rule #1. Poetry is unique. A book of poetry is not a novel, so please resist the current trend of making books of poetry about one subject, Series writing. A book-length poem is different but most (not all) Series depend heavily on fiction with line breaks, as well as the enemy of the line, the sentence, so get thee beneath the wreckage, Story, and be thee drowned.



Change the Game Rule #2. No former student of a judge of a literary contest will be eligible for the prize. Judges must either remove themselves or the manuscript. Young poets should practice integrity when acquiring blurbs, requesting them from writers who are new to their work. Say, "I cannot accept this prize because the judge was my teacher." Interrupt the lit-inbreeding, the first step toward verse diversity!


Change the Game Rule #3. I am not telling writers what to write but I am telling them to write Now, about Today, to engage Society, all of the designs of Nature. We take too long, crafting our cries for permanence when nothing is meant to last. We've allowed the immediacy of ignorance to out advertise us and advertiser...s to out cinema us. Cinema owes poetry. Our lines don't have enough current mouths in them.


Change the Game Rule #4. Susan Sontag told me, "There are Only Two Places to Publish Poetry, the New Yorker and the Paris Review." O, the Traceable Hierarchy of Literary Publishing and the Predictable Schema of Most Rewarded Work: Witness, Experience, Simile, Fade-out with a Metaphor. How to Land at FSG, Get Noticed by... Knopf? Don't Start, Be Already Started, Pre-Page, in the Hand, in the Approach, in the Worry.


Change the Game Rule #5. Choose to Continue Language and Culture not to Leave it as You Have Inherited it. Every Time Writing Tries to Write You, Re-write It or Revise You. This Also Applies to Lines and Stanzas which are Governed by Breathing More so than Music or Meaning. I Take that Back. Music plus Meaning are Flowers in the pot of Dirt Known as Breathing!


Change the Game Rule #6. The Workshop Model Must Become Mobile. Time for the Literary Socratic Table to Spin. The (Living) Creative Process not the (Dead) Poem Must be Present. Time to Back to the Future to Iowa 1936 and add some moonwalking. The Workshop Model is Broke and Does Not Serve Wholeness.


Change the Game Rule #7. Share Your Resources. Journals and Anthologies Need Writers More than Writers Need Them. For Black Writers this Means Share Your White Folks. For White Folks this Means Syllabi More Black Writers. An Editor is not A Tastemaker––the Writing Is!


Change the Game Rule #8. Younger Writers With One, Two, Three Books (Flavors of the Month), Write Notes to the Editors Who Love You Suggesting That They Also Publish the Writers Who Have Made A Path for You. Too Often (As a Short-sighted Control Move), Older Editors Will Replace the Cultural Foundation with Young Writers Who are Simply Reinventing the 'Fro-Wheel. Beware, Inkslingers, of Such Advancement-Standstill.


Change the Game Rule #9: Don't Publish for Publication's Sake. Only Send to Journals You Really Like. A Table of Contents is a Community, A Conversation. If You Can't Find A Decent Place for Exchange or to Change the Exchange, Start Your Own. Don't Over Publish Or You Will End Up Like...


Change the Game Rule #10: Let the work Network.