american political poetry in the 21st century - STIBA Malang

EMBODIED AGENCY 65
Jesse Helms were not responsible in some way for the attacks, Baraka
begins the major rhetorical strategy of the poem. Here’s the line:
“They say (who say? Who do the saying.” This parenthesis remains
open for the entire poem and structures nearly every line thereafter.
All but 44 of the final 207 lines of the poem begin with the word
“who.” 16 These lines combine relative clauses and questions that
simultaneously refine the actions and history of “they” while also
questioning them. Some are very specific, such as “Who genocided
Indians,” “Who invaded Grenada,” and “Who blew up the Maine,”
even as others are general, such as “Who tell the lies,” “Who the
biggest executioner,” and “Who make money from war.” It is important
not to read each “who” as either an interrogative pronoun that
introduces a question or as a relative pronoun that introduces a subordinate
clause. Baraka brilliantly does both at once—defining
“them” also questions “them.” The repetition of “who” clauses creates
an owl sound that mimics a night owl keeping watch on events
that pass under her perch. Baraka’s voice is thus a revelatory one that
functions to expose injustices on its watch.
The repeated “who” phrases feature historical figures, most of
whom are revolutionaries, civil rights activists, assassinated leaders,
leftist freedom fighters, and the pariah figures who oppress them. The
huge number of names—both heroes and enemies—is overwhelming,
but it give the poem a strange texture of both historical particularity
and undirected rant. David L. Smith claims that Baraka’s poems are
best as political art when they are “grounded in historical particulars”
and worst “when based on abstractions, generalized attacks, and
broad exhortations” (“Amiri Baraka” 236). “Somebody Blew Up
America” fulfills both poles on a large scale. 9/11 gives the poem particularity
whereas the preponderance of historical and geopolitical
contexts realize Smith’s claims about Baraka’s least successful political
poems and, for some, compromise his credibility as a rational voice.
However, the numerous historical and geopolitical contexts are strategically
convincing in one important manner: to show the global reach
and influence of American power. The poem’s implied text suggests
that the world’s disastrous events over the last century contain
American fingerprints. When the speaker simultaneously asks and
declares “Who killed” Malcolm X, the Kennedys, Martin Luther
King, Jr., Steve Biko, Salvador Allende, Che Guevara, Laurent Kabila,
Patrice Lumumba, Huey Newton, Medgar Evers, and Rosa
Luxembourg, it sounds like conspiracy theory, but also like the result
of a white capitalist global power structure that destroys progressive
voices. Even if Baraka cannot claim that the CIA was directly