Amiri Baraka
born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the U.S.A., the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. He is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s that became, though short – lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetics. Blues People (1963) and the play Dutchman (1963) practically seeded “the cultural corollary to black nationalism.” Other titles range from Selected Poetry of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones (1979), to The Music (1987), a fascinating collection of poems and monographs on Jazz and Blues authored by Baraka and his wife Amina, and his boldly sortied essays, The Essence of Reparations (2003). He has taught at Yale, Columbia, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He lives in Newark with his wife, poet and author, Amina Baraka. His awards and honors include an Obie, the American Academy of Arts & Letters award, the James Weldon Johnson Medal for contributions to the arts, Rockefeller Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants, Professor Emeritus at the State university of New York at Stony Brook, and the Poet Laureate of New Jersey.
Book for David Meltzer
by Julie Rogers
In your chair, your cave
head bent to book
your prayer, your cradle
quiet lights your eyes,
fingertips, bowing spine
wooing mind
from its house of white
head atop an old man disguise
dog – eared trappings of sage,
sweatshirt loose
on bones ground down
into flesh you wrestle daily.
Clomp along to the teapot
stand at the sink
look out over the Oakland hills
delight in their heavy gray,
pause on the walk back
to swallow titles, each a cell
that fled your body
for the shelves,
pause again, look in
on me still across the bed
my skin your page
belly of words
mythic dark patch
your full quill
breasts, O love’s round letters
will write your poems
but today you are reading.
from House Of The Unexpected
Stuntman
by David Meltzer
I wanted to be a stunt
man, crashing through
glass doors, pound out
cowboy hero face
in B – movie saloon, fly
out apartment window
smash onto parked car
roof, motorcycle off cliff
into dark angry sea, cop
car ram into high speed
perp van, slam raw hand
into slick alien guts, wrest
sword from samurai grip, rip
grenade tossed by Nazi
scar, 10 car pile up Kong
provokes, near black out
underwater trapped in diving
bell, afire race down end of
planet street, flip into air
above ancient volcano, seat
belt won’t unlock buckle
in quicksand surround, trapeze
snaps me down to no net, roll
through papier mache
avalanche into surprise
iron wall, fall onto
a horse not there, oak
break – away chair doesn’t
on my head, airplane wing
strap won’t let my feet go,
rooftop to rooftop leap
missed, crunch spine
chakras into dust, karate
kick in kishkes
ruptures spleen,
retractable nails don’t
in dueling yogis fight
scene, as Plastic Man
double flattened out
hero accordion in
elevator mishap, stalked
by monster orca, lost
three fingers already
bent by bad punches,
forget the scene
w/ the lioness in heat,
& more galore
as they splash on movie ads
I wanted to become a stuntman
I became a poet
“Imagination Is the Only Lucid Way to Meet Life” — Alan, Pessin
by Will Staple
The flying penis prepares a community of antlers
a tranquil reunion of great singers
a fraternity of the liberated spirit
where regards are never amiss.
Interrogate the travelers that have seen
the long history of combat
declaring their independent mentality
inventing private property
declaring their difference from animals.
The intact lords of desire
despoil the qualms of the unadventurous
abandon the false heritage of inhibition
and shamelessly sow luminous promises
in a mirror – lined room
with a pink dresser.