Philadelphia Weekly

Amiri Baraka and Guthrie Ramsey Jr.

Anyone looking for a little culture tonight—free, controversial culture, at that—should head over to World Cafe Live, for a night of poetry and jazz courtesy of artist-in-residence Amiri Baraka and UPenn professor Guthrie Ramsey Jr.

Baraka is the fiery civil rights activist, teacher and noted author who came to prominence during the 1960s (as LeRoi Jones) alongside several other beat and black nationalist scribes, writing from a perspective of violent, armed revolution. He quickly became known for attempting to use his poetry as a weapon and went so far as to condemn the pacifism of the civil rights movement in “Black Art,” written in 1965, which encouraged the establishment of “a black world.”

Baraka’s continued lecturing and writing since then, and has remained just as controversial. In Sept. 2002, he read his 2001 poem “Somebody Blew Up America” at the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, a screed with passages pushing the conspiracy theory that Jewish employees of the World Trade Center were given a heads up to stay home on 9/11, and that five Israelis were “filming the explosion/And cracking they sides at the notion.” In response, then-New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey tried to remove him from the state’s poet laureate post after the Newark-born Baraka refused to resign. When McGreevey was unsuccessful, the New Jersey Senate eliminated the position altogether.

Baraka will be performing his poetry alongside Ramsey, Jr., a professor, musician and author of Race Music: Black Cultures from Be-Bop to Hip-Hop. Ramsey’s writing has appeared in several publications around the U.S., including The New York Times and The Village Voice. / Randy LoBasso

5pm. Free. World Café Live. 3025 Walnut St. 215.898.4965. africana.sas.upenn.edu
 

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WHEN
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Recurring: ONCE

TIME & PRICE
5pm. Free.

WHERE
World Cafe Live , 3025 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA
One time only on 03/14/2013. .

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