In the nature
of flesh, these clown gods
are words, blown
in the winters, thou
windows, lacking
sun.
In the nature,
of ideas, in the nature of
words, these
clown gods are
winter. Are blown
thru our windows.
The flesh
& bone
of the season. Each
dead thing
hustled
across the pavement. Each
dead word
drowned
in a winter wind. Are
in the nature
of flesh. These
liars, clown
gods
–Amiri Baraka (from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note)
(I'm a bit under the weather, and the weather's lousy.)
Posted by languagehat at June 22, 2003 07:51 PMThe only hit on amazon for "twenty volume suicide note" is a book by Le Roi Jones bearing the title you give, and the only hit on Knox's library search engine is a book by the author you give, Imamu Amiri Baraka, same title, same publisher, same year. Care to fill in the uninformed? :-)
Also, I found this New York Review of Books piece, which makes it seem like LeRoi Jones is a pretty interesting poet:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/11816
Posted by: Chris at June 22, 2003 10:47 PMOh, same person it seems. Sorry. :-)
Posted by: Chris at June 22, 2003 10:50 PMYeah, same person, and a good poet by any name. But he gave up the name Le Roi Jones as Muhammad Ali gave up the name Cassius Clay, and I respect both choices. Don't apologize; it's a perfectly reasonable question!
Posted by: language hat at June 22, 2003 11:35 PMhttp://www.olimu.com/WebJournalism/Texts/Commentary/OwlExploding.htm
Posted by: Ilya Vinarsky at June 27, 2003 06:42 PMYes, the man has written some incredibly dumb things. He's still a good poet. Go figure.
Posted by: language hat at June 27, 2003 09:12 PMUh, whicha way to Japan?
Posted by: James Garside at April 16, 2005 12:49 PM