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Cant force poet resignation poet laureate { October 3 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35682-2002Oct2.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35682-2002Oct2.html
N.J. Poet Laureate Defends His 9/11 Work
State Officials Can't Force Resignation
By a Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 3, 2002; Page C01
NEWARK, N.J. -- It was supposed to be a lovely little literary event, a celebration of this city's history in letters. With the state conferring "literary landmark" status on the Newark Public Library yesterday, writers and their supporters converged on the drab but stately stone building on Washington Street.
But more than a literary event, this would be news. One of the state's most incendiary and prominent writers, in fact its poet laureate, was to speak. And the anticipation of what Imamu Amiri Baraka would say in defense of his literary status seemed to electrify the gathering. Before a standing-room-only crowd and a battery of TV cameras, the slightly stooped man with gray hair and overlarge spectacles in the no-frills blue suit and suede shoes, rose and walked to the microphone.
"This is my statement," Baraka said defiantly. And to wild cheers from his supporters in the crowd of about 200, he declared: "I will not apologize and I will not resign."
And for an hour, the poet laureate of New Jersey threw down the gauntlet, challenging a state bureaucracy that has tried for days to force him to resign. He is under fire for a poem -- penned shortly after last year's terrorist attacks, before he became poet laureate in July -- that several groups call offensive and anti-Semitic.
"Somebody Blew Up America," the October 2001 poem is called, and it is a six-page screed against the powers that be, whoever they may be, especially those who have oppressed others historically. In poems ("It's Nation Time") and plays (the famed "Dutchman"), racism and abuse of power have been Baraka's main themes through his career in literary activism spanning 40 years. In this latest controversial work, abuse of power is writ large. He argues that the intelligence agencies of the world, including those in the United States, knew that the World Trade Center would be attacked -- and let it happen. Toward its end, the poem reads:
Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed.
Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the twin towers
To stay at home that day
Why did Sharon stay away.
Those lines have outraged Gov. Jim McGreevey, the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the Anti-Defamation League. All have called for Baraka to relinquish his title. But the iconic 67-year-old black poet, who was inducted last year into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has accused his accusers of violating his First Amendment rights as an artist. His critics, he said, are trafficking in "trashy propaganda characteristic of right-wing zealots."
In his statement, Baraka railed against Bush, "the counterfeit president"; against the Florida balloting fiasco, "the Florida coup"; and against the Bush administration, "the most dangerous terrorists in the world." Why couldn't the almighty Air Force, in which he served three years in the 1950s, intercept the rogue airliners coursing through U.S. skies on Sept. 11? Why can Israel, among others, have weapons of mass destruction but Iraq can't? "The answer to that is white supremacy," he said. And he chided Bush on Iraq, saying the United States had a "regime-change jones."
"There's a lot of people who understand very clearly what I'm saying, who believe what I'm saying who would not say this in a million years. But I have to be their police dog. I have to be out there letting people jump on me and attack me, when in a month or so it will all come out. All this stuff about, 'Did they know? Did they know?' This is obvious."
Down in Trenton, the state capital, meanwhile, the governor's office and the artistic bureaucrats have been wringing their hands over how to make the Baraka problem go away. Problem is, they can't. Only the second poet laureate of New Jersey, Baraka -- born LeRoi Jones -- has served since July. His term lasts two years and carries a $10,000 honorarium. The position was created by an act of law that does not spell out how a laureate is to be removed.
"There's no provision in the legislation for that," said Kevin Davitt, McGreevey's press secretary. And in this election year, New Jersey lawmakers have had their hands full with several other issues, to say the least.
"There's no other delicate way to put it," Davitt said. "We are stuck with him."
What is curious about the whole affair is the fact that Baraka's poem has been in circulation since last October. That means it was available for New Jersey officials to examine before they made their selection in July. But Davitt said the governor's office only rubber-stamps the recommendation of a special arts panel put together by the Council for the Humanities.
"Our only role is to hand the poet laureate a certificate saying you are the poet laureate," Davitt said.
Said Jane Brailove Rutkoff, the humanities council's executive director, "The council, acting in conformity with the requirements of the statute in question, convened a panel -- only one of those members was from the New Jersey Council on the Humanities -- which recommended Mr. Baraka."
It all started on Sept. 19. That is the day when Baraka, making his national debut as New Jersey poet laureate, read "Somebody Blew Up America" at the Geraldine R. Dodge Festival in Stanhope, a large, prestigious event. The Jewish Standard, a Bergen County weekly, wrote about the poem the following week, which alerted the Anti-Defamation League.
"He believes that Israel had foreknowledge and that 4,000 Israelis didn't go to work that day, and that is all part of the big lie that goes back to September 11 that was part of the speeches by imams throughout the Middle East," said Shai Goldstein, head of the state's ADL office. To say that Israel knew and advised people not to work, "That's anti-Semitic and that's anti-Israel." (Not to mention the fact that there were never 4,000 Israelis employed at the Trade Center to begin with.)
Baraka denies that his poem is anti-Semitic. "Being anti-Israel is not the same as being anti-Jewish," he said. "I challenge the ADL to show anywhere in my poem that it is anti-Semitic."
The Newark Star Ledger weighed in poetically in an editorial yesterday.
Of poets one hates to be critical
But not when they're anti-Semitical
And that's why Amiri
Of whom we've grown weary
Should quit, heeding pleas non-political.
But he won't. Baraka won't go. In fact, as if energized by the controversy, he laid out a mission -- to spread poetry more widely in the state, to new communities, new venues.
"I will publicize and popularize poetry," he promised, as his public shouted in support.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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