And according to two of the four poets who nominated him -- a committee organized by the New Jersey Arts Council -- Baraka was as logical a choice as any.

"If you look at any of the critical material and standard anthologies, he is represented," said James Haba, the director of the Dodge Festival and one of the poets who nominated Baraka. "He has the national and international reputation that will persist beyond this moment. He is a New Jersey native, he lived almost all his life in Newark. He also has a strong following in the black community.

"What are you going to do? This is a major literary figure who has been active in New Jersey life for almost four decades."

Gerald Stern, the first poet laureate of New Jersey, who also nominated Baraka, agreed.

"If I were to sit down with other poets in my living room a lot of names would come up: Alicia Ostriker, Stephen Dunn, C.K. Williams and Amiri Baraka, just to name a few," said Stern. "It's not an abnormal choice. It's a legitimate choice."

Both poets had not read "Somebody Blew Up America." Baraka wrote the poem in October of 2001 and while it was circulated on the Internet and throughout the world, the only media attention it received at the time was in an article in the Daily Princetonian, the Princeton University student newspaper.

Both Stern and Haba cited Baraka's 1980 confession in the Village Voice as evidence that he has repented for his sins. Neither of the poets believe he should be fired.

"Did he write anti-Semitic things at one time? Yes. He did," Stern explained. "He apologized profusely so I took him at his word. I know his poetry and plays well. But I didn't sit down for hours and ask to see his latest poetry. Maybe we should have. We should have done a lot of things. There was a sense that he had mended his ways."

Stern suggested that he might not have nominated Baraka had he read "Somebody Blew Up America": "'Israeli' is a code word for 'Jew' and he knows that, too. He's a brilliant man. And there's a long history of black-Jewish animosity, as well as friendship.

"I am sensitive to what appears to be the anti-Semitic utterance which reflects that Jews knew in advance [about the Sept. 11 attacks]. I'm sensitive as a Jew. However, a man is allowed to be paranoid."

What might be most disturbing about the episode, however, is that Baraka -- who phrases all of his ideas in the form of questions in the poem -- really does believe that 4,000 Israeli workers stayed away from the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

"Yes, I believed it," Baraka told Salon. "I wouldn't have written it if I didn't believe it. They have no right to call me anti-Semitic. I can't have a position about a foreign country? They're trying to protect the image of Israel so Bush can make war."

In fact, Baraka believes that other Western nations, such as France and Germany, also had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, although it is the U.S. and Israel that he specifically targets in the poem.

"They couldn't 'connect the dots'? The fact is that the U.S. and Israel know they will be exposed. I know it will be."

Baraka also called attention to other parts of his poem -- stanzas that express sympathy for the suffering of Jews:

"Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said 'America First'
and ok'd the yellow stars"

According to Goldstein of the Anti-Defamation League, one stanza does not help Baraka's case.

"He claims to respect the victims of the Shoah," Goldstein stated, "but his words are designed to perpetuate the murder of millions of Jews in Israel."

But is it rash to shove Baraka out the door as if he's some lone lunatic? Both Stern and Haba raised the logical point that surely, if Baraka believes this, he's not the only one -- and that's a much bigger problem than one man and a poem.

"I'm sorry to say that he's not the only one who believes that's true," Haba said. "I don't believe it's true. Are we going to find some way to talk with people who believe that? That's a serious issue that we might be tending to."

Deborah Jacobson, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, agrees. "We can't continue to use our pain and fear to justify our disregard for freedom, justice and equality. When we allow for the disintegration of our core democratic beliefs, then we're really giving in to the terrorists."

Goldstein rejects the claim that Baraka's First Amendment rights would be violated if he were fired. "He has the right to say anything he wants," Goldstein said. "He does not have the right to be honored for his speech. Does the First Amendment protect your right to not be fired for something you said?"

Still, according to Robert Pinsky, former U.S. poet laureate and author of "Democracy, Culture, and the Voice of Poetry," "Poet laureate is not a job or a role or a government position, it is an honorary term. It is a form of recognition, like the key to the city ... 'Poet laureate' does not entitle one to anything or oblige one to anything. It is like being given a compliment. You can't fire somebody from a compliment.

"The poet laureate of New Jersey has the same right as any other American to make a fool of himself. Compliments can be regretted, but not revoked."

Well, it's pretty obvious that the governor of New Jersey regrets the compliment he paid the artist Amiri Baraka. Baraka, however, doesn't seem particularly concerned about how his politics might be affecting his art.

"Does anyone doubt that the 'Cantos' would be much better if [Ezra] Pound's thinking were less cockeyed, provincial, demented, nasty?" said Pinsky. "Poets are people; their works are human works. We all likely know, or can easily imagine, people capable of saying stupid, vicious things who also sometimes say beautiful or wise things.

"If a poem or a person espouses a stupid or vicious proposition, that makes the poem or person worse, in my judgment ... In other words, each of us, and each of our works, is to be judged on the merits. Moral viewpoint is among the merits, I think."

Recent Stories