From my point of view, when we write we either write from the inside, from the outside or a combination of these two. Poets like Amiri Baraka have the guts to start a revolution without guns and violence but with art (although the violence part can be argued for this poem). Over the centuries, writers have reflected the people and their feelings about the situations they find themselves in, but only that, they started revolutions, why? Because words are powerful. A psychopath narcissist brainwashed a whole nation with words, Adolf Hitler. However, when words, writing, art are used to bring about positive change then this is lauded.
In the poem “Black Art” Amiri Baraka rebels for the African American society and tries to ‘raise the people’ to bring about change. A brave and yet often too aggressive tone comes across from this poem. He says that he wants “poems that kill”, “wrestles”, “weapons”- vocabulary used reflects a battle like sense. What I found interesting were the rawring sounds included in the poem since I never came across a poem that included sound effects which yes, are very effective in sending the messages that are intended to be sent by the poet. As I said before it is a poem that is aggressive towards other societies like white people and Jews: “spokesman for the Jews clutch his throat” or “setting fire and death to whities ass”, as a ‘whitie’, yes I was somewhat disturbed, however, I wasn’t there during that harsh period in time, I don’t truly understand the situation African Americans were in and how badly white people treated them.
