Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus…
Things have come to that.And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.Nobody sings anymore.
And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter’s room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there…
Only she on her knees, peeking intoHer own clasped hands
MARGINALIA
The year is officially starting. Well, for me, that is. I tried to delay it for a few days but I had to face reality sooner or later. I am feeling pretty optimistic, but the melancholy is there at the edges. I can feel it. But I resolve to be much stronger. Wonder, T., wonder. It exists.
ABOUT AMIRI BARAKA (LEROI JONES)
Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, on October 7, 1934. Baraka’s published his first volume of poetry, Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note, in 1961. From 1961 to 1963 he was coeditor, with Diane Di Prima, of The Floating Bear, a literary newsletter. His increasing mistrust of white society was reflected in two plays: The Slave and The Toilet, both written in 1962. Blues People: Negro Music in White America, which he wrote, and The Moderns:… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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Thomas Hanchett
Wow. This poem really hit the spot. Is there a word for “optimistic melancholy”? There should be.
veronica
people are amazing creatures of resilience. we get used to the most horrible, miserable heartbreaks and adapt and endure and live on. it can be sad.
Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note by Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) « moxiesupper
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moxiesupper
Thank you so much for posting thi poem! –I’ve been searching –rather desperately– for it! –found it by way of those “clasped hands” at the end; I remembered something about “praying” (at least from the outside), and then I recalled that it was a poem by Le Roi Jones, and that led me to this blog, and gratitude I already expressed! (By the way, I nearly died in July 2011 when a cranial aneurysm ruptured; astonishing that I’m even alive! –and even more astonishing that I can speak!)
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Gregory Obenson
Children give meaning to life. Thanks to the speaker’s daughter.
Herb
I have always been disappointed with this poem. Okay…here’s the “preface.” Where’s the 20-volume note. (Maybe it’s Baraka’s entire remarkable well-lived life?
Harry F Banks
Unfortunately, I must dare say that the last two commentators above do not get, if you will, the poem. In fact, the poem is about the writer’s anxiety about what life has meant to him at this juncture of his life. The safety and security of a nice tidy life is about to end.