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Article: LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and the limits of open form.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- June 22, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Only ideas,
and their opposites.
Like,
he was really
nowhere. ("A Poem for Speculative Hipsters," Transbluesency 110)
In a well-known passage from his autobiography, Amiri Baraka--then called LeRoi Jones--remembers a moment in which his own fascinations run headlong into the sort of ill-defined ideological wall with which culture can tend to divide us. Jones at this point is not yet a published poet, playwright, and critic, but rather a twenty-two-year-old college dropout stationed in Puerto Rico, a "weather gunner" in the U.S. Air Force. Just as feelings of class alienation at Howard University have led him to seek refuge in the Air Force, so ...