Who owns the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
WHO/ WHO/ WHOWHO/. 45
The point of “Somebody Blew Up America” besides drawing attention to various
atrocities, is to answer the question of who. In his autobiography, Baraka addresses the
topic of questions. He says that “different questions come up at different states and
stages. We answer them in motion, casually, with our actions, no matter what comes
out of our mouths” (Baraka, Auto 101). So perhaps the answers are not fixed. The
questions in the poem may stay the same, but perhaps there is not a single answer, or
at least an identifiable person or group, for all of the poem’s questions. Baraka was
called a number of things and many different attacks were leveled at him. Maragalit Fox
summarizes them and says that “over six decades, Mr. Baraka’s writings — his work
also included essays and music criticism — were periodically accused of being antiSemitic, misogynist, homophobic, racist, isolationist and dangerously militant”. Thus,
how you read him and whom you think he identifies as “who” depends on what title you
assign him. The closest we might come is to say the ruling class; those with power and
money are responsible for the actions and atrocities that the poem lists (and this is the
same group that would take issue with the poem later).20 Consider such lines as “who
want the world to be ruled by imperialism and / national oppression and / terror /
violence, and hunger and poverty” (“Somebody” 50). Another strong possibility is
America, center of capitalism, war, and bloat. Both answers would also be in keeping
with Baraka’s last phase, his Marxist stage.21 He could mean white people.
Others, however, would be content with neither this poem nor this reading. To
understand the reaction, let us revisit some of the early history of Howl. On October 13,
1955 Ginsberg read the first part of Howl at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The
response was overwhelming enthusiastic with some audience members such as
Kenneth Rexroth brought to tears (Watson 187). Ginsberg’s reading concluded with a
“roaring ovation” (187). “Howl and Other Poems was published in August 1956,” by City
Lights and “on “May 21, 1957” Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the publisher, and Shigeyoshi
Murao, the bookstore manager, of City Lights were arrested on charges of obscenity
(252). “On October 3rd, 1957 Judge Horn declared” them “not guilty” (253). Thus, in line
20
After a reading of “Somebody Blew Up America” on March 31, 2003at Florida State University
an audience member asked him who is the who in the poem. Baraka, having previously advised the
students to form their own weekly study groups to tackle big issues and important questions replied,
“that’s what your study groups are for.”
21
In the Editor’s Note to The LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka Reader William J. Harris explains, “I
have arranged his work chronologically, and broken it up into four periods: The Beat Period (1957-1962),
The Transitional Period (1963-1965), the Black Nationalist Period (1965-1974), and the Third World
Marxist Period (1974- )” (xv).
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