into”(Rampersad, 2006). Despite the strong beat
and Greenwich village connection through the
founding of Yugen magazine with Di Prima, He is
still the official shaman poet of black
consciousness such so that he changed his name to
"Amiri Baraka" in the wake of the Malcolm X
assassination (he dedicates the poem "A poem for
black hearts" to him) He states in his poem "Black
Art"…"Let the world be a black poem". Here he
seeks to evoke black consciousness and awaken his
people from silence. Besides this shamanic
omnipresence, there is shamanic omniscience
(after all the word shaman comes from the word
saman meaning to know). He states in “Preface to
a twenty volume suicide note”…”And each night
I count the stars and each night I get the same
number”. This is accentuated in “In memory of
radio” where he beseeches “What can I say? Am I
a sage or something? Who understands it?” Here
Baraka wonders is he jettisoned, alone in his
shamanic self-defining state.
Baraka turns to his people, his tribe, to
contrition his knowledge. As he states “The
artist’s role is to raise the consciousness of the
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