american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

64 AMERICAN POLITICAL POETRY
fiction (DeShazer 13), Baraka’s poem, especially given its use of
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), has more in common
with many hip-hop songs, the American “fugitive means of expression”
par excellence. 15 Even so, its form, length, and rhetorical strategies
make it a sprawling litany of accusations, collapsed historical
contexts, and conspiracy theories, all of which combine to make it a
fascinating, provocative mess.
“Somebody Blew Up America” does not open with a defiant voice.
The first seven lines, which differ in tone and voice from the rest of the
poem, serve as prologue and de facto justification for its oppositional
perspective. In prosaic English the speaker says matter-of-factly that
“All thinking people / oppose terrorism / both domestic / & international,”
but that “one should not / be used / To cover the other.”
These flat, calm, measured lines are enclosed in parentheses to separate
them from the invective that follows; they seem a strange prefatory
apology for that invective. Cleverly, though, they proclaim the
speaker’s opposition to the terrorist attacks, but also set up his opposition
to “domestic” terrorism, which alludes to the coming attacks on
corporate and imperial power.
After these prefatory remarks, Baraka’s speaker confronts the official
public discourse about 9/11. He creates a somewhat abstruse
enemy whose claims he questions throughout the poem: “They say it’s
some terrorist” (my emphasis). This relatively ambiguous enemy
oddly, and perhaps appropriately, echoes the ambiguity concerning
the identity of the terrorist enemy in the “War on Terror.” Even
though “they” is difficult to parse because Baraka collapses centuries
of global, historical, and geopolitical contexts in order to assume a farreaching
purview of oppression, it certainly refers to the white, Euro-
American imperial power the poem rebels against—more specifically
the military–industrial–corporate complex. One aspect of “they” is
pointed out explicitly by rap group dead prez—currently the only
overtly revolutionary, political hip-hop group with a major label
record deal (the rest record on independent labels)—in the song
“ ‘they’ schools,” which addresses the abuses of the American public
school system (lets get free 2000). Dead prez notes that the “same
people” who run the school system run the prison system; it is no
wonder, they suggest, that more African Americans find a home in the
latter than in the former. For Baraka’s speaker as for dead prez, it is
dangerous to trust anything “they” say or do.
Beginning in line 25, after the speaker doubts that “American
terrorists” such as the Ku Klux Klan, Skin heads, “the them that blows
up nigger Churches,” Trent Lott, David Duke, Rudy Giuliani, and