‘The System of Dante’s Hell,’ by Amiri Baraka
The System of Dante’s Hell (1965)
by Amiri Baraka
(Grove Press)
Amiri Baraka served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey in 2002 and 2003. He was born in Newark in 1934 and died in Newark in 2014. Depending upon who you talk to he was either a James Baldwin-styled genius poet, scholar, playwright, critic, educator, novelist and essayist who chronicled the awful fate of Blacks in America with clarity and rage OR a purveyor of antisemitism, homophobia, violence, hate and misogyny.
Whatever he was, he wrote brilliantly in his “The Music: Reflections On Jazz and Blues,” “The Book Of Monk” and “New Music New Poetry.” His 53-year career, although blighted by controversy, also produced the most searing, unequivocable, dramatic, shocking and nasty-ass book. It was a fictional account about living in the Black ghettos of Newark, entitled The System of Dante’s Hell, comparing Newark itself to Dante’s Inferno of the 14th Century, describing Hell on Earth. He even includes a diagram of the nine concentric circles of torment in Hell. In his vision, Hell exists not only in Newark but in the Deep South as well, and in his own life struggling with segregation and racism. (Small wonder, for instance, that legendary bluesman Memphis Slim gave up on America completely and moved to Paris in 1962 where he remained for the rest of his life.)
Baraka wrote The System Of Dante’s Hell in 1965 when he was still LeRoi Jones. After he graduated from Newark’s Barringer High School idolizing Miles Davis, he turned down a scholarship to Rutgers, joined the Army, reached the rank of Sargeant, but was dishonorably discharged for flirting with Communism. He married a Jewish girl, Hettie Cohen, and had two daughters. He changed his name after Black Leader Malcolm X was assassinated, left his wife and children, moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory/Theater School, before moving back to Newark. Frequently citing the need for violence in White Man’s America, he spearheaded the Black Arts Literary Movement, advocating for “poems that kill.” He broke ties with such Beat poets as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs and also with the pacifist-integrational civil rights movement that he was highly critical of. “Arm Yourself Or Harm Yourself,” he would say in his lectures.
Mired in controversy, and getting more and more radical as the years went on, the public outrage during his second year as New Jersey’s Poet Laureate had the governor asking him to step down which he refused. Thus, in 2004, Gov. McGreevey, and the New Jersey State Legislature, officially abolished the position, thus there would be no more Poet Laureates in this state. With his daughter murdered, and his son becoming Newark Mayor, Baraka died at 79 still hating whites with all of his heart.
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