Original Post Date: 2007
This article of Amiri Baraka is ridiculously overwritten. I feel like he threw around a lot of words and didn't simplify the text for a general audience. Maybe this article wasn't meant for a general audience and more for an academic one, but I felt like he made it unnecessarily complicated. I was able to understand some points of the article really well. I was even able to agree with him at certain points. For example, I agreed with the point he made when he spoke about receiving chapbooks and magazines of works that promised to be something else with their titles but end up being nothing profound. You can only read so much about the same thing. People are usually telling the same stories in their poetry. You may think no one has ever written about this before. In reality though, there is someone that thinks like you. As I like to say, "The only thing that is unique is the word unique. Everything, everyone has common ground." What makes one poet different from another is the way they say it. It is those who put a new spin to an old idea that stand out from the crowd.
It is also those who dare to say what has never been said or really talked about that stand out. People are taught to play it safe. No one must talk about the nitty gritty of the real world. This is why you see a lot of safe, boring poetry. I got what Baraka was trying to say. It?s hard to explain it in the right words. They are not coming to me now. Because I?m still trying to understand his message behind all the "big" words. But I think I stated a piece of it. I would probably agree with more of his ideas or be able to disagree and argue more if he wrote this article in a way where more people can understand. I am a very intelligent person, but how can I see his view on poetry, if he can't put it in a way everyone can understand? Sometimes less is more.
This article of Amiri Baraka is ridiculously overwritten. I feel like he threw around a lot of words and didn't simplify the text for a general audience. Maybe this article wasn't meant for a general audience and more for an academic one, but I felt like he made it unnecessarily complicated. I was able to understand some points of the article really well. I was even able to agree with him at certain points. For example, I agreed with the point he made when he spoke about receiving chapbooks and magazines of works that promised to be something else with their titles but end up being nothing profound. You can only read so much about the same thing. People are usually telling the same stories in their poetry. You may think no one has ever written about this before. In reality though, there is someone that thinks like you. As I like to say, "The only thing that is unique is the word unique. Everything, everyone has common ground." What makes one poet different from another is the way they say it. It is those who put a new spin to an old idea that stand out from the crowd.
It is also those who dare to say what has never been said or really talked about that stand out. People are taught to play it safe. No one must talk about the nitty gritty of the real world. This is why you see a lot of safe, boring poetry. I got what Baraka was trying to say. It?s hard to explain it in the right words. They are not coming to me now. Because I?m still trying to understand his message behind all the "big" words. But I think I stated a piece of it. I would probably agree with more of his ideas or be able to disagree and argue more if he wrote this article in a way where more people can understand. I am a very intelligent person, but how can I see his view on poetry, if he can't put it in a way everyone can understand? Sometimes less is more.
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