Amiri Baraka’s poetry is bold, uncompromising, and deeply rooted in the political and cultural struggles of African American life. His work moves with explosive energy, blending jazz rhythms, street language, and sharp social critique. Baraka’s poems often challenge systems of racism, capitalism, and oppression, making his voice one of the most influential in the Black Arts Movement. He believed poetry should not be passive or decorative—it should act, provoke, and awaken.
In his early years, Baraka’s work carried experimental, Beat-influenced tones, but after the political shifts of the 1960s, his writing became more militant, direct, and community-focused. Poems like “Black Art” call for art that is forceful and liberating, created for and by Black people. His language can be fierce and confrontational, yet always purposeful—meant to transform both the reader and society.
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| Amiri baraka |
Baraka also infused music—especially jazz—into his poetry, capturing the improvisational pulse of African American culture. Through his evolving voice, from personal introspection to fiery activism, he explored identity, history, anger, hope, and collective empowerment. Amiri Baraka’s poetry remains a powerful testament to how art can fight injustice, reshape cultural narratives, and demand meaningful change.
An Agony. As Now.
I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women.
Slits in the metal, for sun. Where
my eyes sit turning, at the cool air
the glance of light, or hard flesh
rubbed against me, a woman, a man,
without shadow, or voice, or meaning.
This is the enclosure (flesh,
where innocence is a weapon. An
abstraction. Touch. (Not mine.
Or yours, if you are the soul I had
and abandoned when I was blind and had
my enemies carry me as a dead man
(if he is beautiful, or pitied.
It can be pain. (As now, as all his
flesh hurts me.) It can be that. Or
pain. As when she ran from me into
that forest.
Or pain, the mind
silver spiraled whirled against the
sun, higher than even old men thought
God would be. Or pain. And the other. The
yes. (Inside his books, his fingers. They
are withered yellow flowers and were never
beautiful.) The yes. You will, lost soul, say
‘beauty.’ Beauty, practiced, as the tree. The
slow river. A white sun in its wet sentences.
Or, the cold men in their gale. Ecstasy. Flesh
or soul. The yes. (Their robes blown. Their bowls
empty. They chant at my heels, not at yours.) Flesh
or soul, as corrupt. Where the answer moves too quickly.
Where the God is a self, after all.)
Cold air blown through narrow blind eyes. Flesh,
white hot metal. Glows as the day with its sun.
It is a human love, I live inside. A bony skeleton
you recognize as words or simple feeling.
But it has no feeling. As the metal, is hot, it is not,
given to love.
It burns the thing
inside it. And that thing
screams.
Babylon Revisited
The gaunt thing
with no organs
creeps along the streets
of Europe, she will
commute, in her feathered bat stomach-gown
with no organs
with sores on her insides
even her head
a vast puschamber
of pus(sy) memories
with no organs
nothing to make babies
she will be the great witch of euro-american legend
who sucked the life
from some unknown nigger
whose name will be known
but whose substance will not ever
not even by him
who is dead in a pile of dopeskin
This bitch killed a friend of mine named Bob Thompson
a black painter, a giant, once, she reduced
to a pitiful imitation faggot
full of American holes and a monkey on his back
slapped airplanes
from the empire state building
May this bitch and her sisters, all of them,
receive my words
in all their orifices like lye mixed with
cocola and alaga syrup
feel this shit, bitches, feel it, now laugh your
hysterectic laughs
while your flesh burns
and your eyes peel to red mud
Legacy
(For Blues People)
In the south, sleeping against
the drugstore, growling under
the trucks and stoves, stumbling
through and over the cluttered eyes
of early mysterious night. Frowning
drunk waving moving a hand or lash.
Dancing kneeling reaching out, letting
a hand rest in shadows. Squatting
to drink or pee. Stretching to climb
pulling themselves onto horses near
where there was sea (the old songs
lead you to believe). Riding out
from this town, to another, where
it is also black. Down a road
where people are asleep. Towards
the moon or the shadows of houses.
Towards the songs’ pretended sea.
