"Of Poetry and Protest" Bri Reyes

The thread that I noticed throughout the poems is, at least for the poets chosen for this anthology, the experience of blackness on a highly individual and social level melds with black history and collective memory.  The murders of Emmett Till, Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant by white supremacists, the election of Barack Obama, the triumph and racism that Muhammed Ali faced throughout his childhood, life in the spotlight, and especially in boycotting the Vietnam war were, rightly so, not presented as distant historical facts or textbook jottings.  The speakers of each poem actualized the experiences of the murdered, the silenced and the victimized so that we, the audience, could grasp the urgency and relevance of black liberation.

I think that the essays before the poems allowed me insight into the poet's lives and intentions.  It was difficult for me, after understanding pieces of the poet's consciousness in their introductions to separate the poets from the speakers of the poems.  Because I understood why the poet began writing poetry and wanted to commemorate the subject of the poem, I noticed similarities in the poet's expository voices and the speaker's voices in their poems.  

Amiri Baraka begins with an insight into his childhood.  At the age of eight, sending “letters to President Roosevelt telling him how to with the war” with “diagrams of new weapons” Bakara intuitively understood that his voice is invaluable and with such great confidence he offered his advice to President Roosevelt, knowing that through his ideas expressed here in both expository and poetic voice he could truly further our society (30).  Baraka expands on the continuousness of his consciousness and voice.  He says, “I write poetry ‘cause I always had something to say.  Always” (30).  I can clearly hear Amiri Baraka's voice in “Wise 5” as he leads the reader through the speaker’s thought process around liberation.  The most blatant time period Baraka writes about is the slavery before the 13th amendment, citing “the field’s hands quarters” (33).  However, Bakara uses several words which seem to be 20th century jargon such as “big house” (which I assume in this context means jail) and “TV” (also denoting the mid- twentieth century to the 21st century).  He weaves images of slavery before the 13th amendment with images of slavery that has heavily oppressed black populations since the 13th amendment (the prison industrial complex and its development).  These are concrete examples of time, where the reader can mark the centuries and dates that significant historical events happened.  However, Baraka's speaker, which may be Amiri Baraka himself, appears to be celestial and of both universal and earthly time.  

He writes that the speaker’s sweaty head was,

“Like a mystery

Story

Like a gospel

Hymn

Like the tales

Of the wizards

And the life

Of the Gods” (33).

A huge metaphor, each subsequent word builds on the previous word to elevate the status of the sweaty head- an image seen by white supremacist america as inferior.  
“Mystery” leads to “story”, the “gospel” to “hymn”, “tales” to “wizards” to “life of the Gods.”  Time in this poem is God’s time, it is religious time.  This means that the freedom the speaker seeks is just, it is discovered through cultivation of story, religiousness, song, wizardry and the Gods.  It takes an incredible amount of introspection, wisdom and grit that only comes from the shackles of oppression to overcome.  Because Baraka's speaker, who has experienced the multiplicity and complex, disgusting mazes oppression and racism over many historical time periods he is able to “vow” to liberate himself through whatever means necessary (33).  

Stylistically, to me, the poems rely on much concrete, significant detail and time- hopping to place themselves in a frame of reference which spans multiple localities.  Generally, there is a sense that each poet is omnipotent and omnipresent, the master manipulator of the time- space continuum in their poem.  It felt like the poems were coming from an omnipresent God, powerfully imparting on readers that Christ, the or the figure of salvation must be represented as those who are the victims of the worst kinds of oppression:  i.e. white supremacist violence and institutional abuse.  Toi Derricotte describes KKK members at a lynching as “the bland faces of men who watch a Christ go up in flames, smiling…” in part two of “A Note on My Son’s Face” (49).  White supremacists who believe they are followers of Christ and the will of God forget about Jesus’ oppression and that he was not white.  An allusion to Christ’s crucifixion in the early C.E. reminds the audience that Jesus was persecuted, suffered, had nothing in common with the privileged and was certainly not white.  This parallelism of crucifixion and lynching reminds us that justice, according to Christ at least in a “true north” sense is not aligned with white supremacy, oppression or racism but liberation.  

As an audience, in order to liberate ourselves from the shackles of oppression or the evilness of privilege (depending on our own social location) we must be able to understand a collective history- not just a history of dry power point dates or timelines that you fill out in the fourth grade but a history that has been lived and continues to be lived and plays out in social situations, laws, and all webs of oppression in everyday life.  I feel so blessed to have been able to read “Of Poetry and Protest” because it breaks white canonical rules about linear time and the contributors to the anthology created a distinctive collective, powerful and unified voice that also values distinct experiences.