For such a small sized poem, I like how powerful it is...the idea of arriving at the forest of motives is quite mysterious. It's as if he has seen behind the wizards curtain of poets. At least, thats what it seems to be that the narrator is suggesting. It's difficult to gauge whether "nowhere" is a good place, a zen place or a kind of cop out.

Ideas and their opposites. Ah yes, the eternal dilemma.

Probably not one of the 20 greatest poems ever written, but the ideas still resonate. I like Connie Chatterly bringing socialism to England, and I can more than identify with those who find themselves caught in a Nowhere between ideas and their opposites.

I read his book, The Dead Lecturer, back in the 60's and appreciated his poems back then. I just picked up the book and thumbed through it after I read this poem. I am not sure that his work has stood the test of time or maybe it is my interests have changed.

Amiri Baraka, who published under his birth name LeRoi Jones until 1967, is known for his strident social criticism and an incendiary style that has made it difficult for some audiences and critics to respond with objectivity to his works. Baraka's art stems from his African-American heritage. Throughout his career his method in poetry, drama, fiction, and essays has been confrontational, calculated to shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans during the second half of the twentieth century. Baraka's own political stance has changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods; a member of the avant garde during the 1950s, Baraka became a black nationalist, and more recently a Marxist with socialist ideals.

Baraka's legacy as a major poet of the second half of the twentieth century remains matched by his importance as a cultural and political leader. His influence on younger writers was significant and widespread, and as a leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s Baraka did much to define and support black literature's mission into the next century. His experimental fiction of the 1960s is yet considered some of the most significant contribution to black fiction since that of Jean Toomer, who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Writers from other ethnic groups have credited Baraka with opening "tightly guarded doors" in the white publishing establishment, noted Murice Kenney in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, adding: "We'd all still be waiting the invitation from the New Yorker without him. He taught us how to claim it and take it."
(www.poetryfoundation.org)

A Poem for Speculative Hipsters

by Amiri Baraka

 

He had got, finally, 

to the forest 

of motives. There were no 

owls, or hunters. No Connie Chatterleys 

resting beautifully 

on their backs, having casually 

brought socialism 

to England. 

                  Only ideas, 

and their opposites. 

                              Like, 

                he was really 

                nowhere.