Could be Basil Rathbone as far as I know,
Barry.
Hal
"There are then quite a number of things
one does or does not know."
--Gertrude Stein
Halvard Johnson
================
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On Mar 17, 2008, at 11:53 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
> Halvard,
>
> Would you agree that the dedication is to a literary figure within
> Leroi Jones' literary context at the
> time, Basil King, whom I witnessed the first time in the fall of
> 2007 at the National Gallery of Art,
> albeit within the recent documentary film on Black Mountain
> College? Or could it be Basil
> Paterson, father of the brand-new governor of New York?
>
> Barry
>
>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: Halvard Johnson
>> To: Johnson Halvard
>> Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 10:11 AM
>> Subject: Poems by others: Amiri Baraka, "Political Poem"
>>
>>
>> Political Poem
>>
>>
>> (for Basil)
>>
>>
>> Luxury, then, is a way of
>> being ignorant, comfortably
>> An approach to the open market
>> of least information. Where theories
>> can thrive, under heavy tarpaulins
>> without being cracked by ideas.
>>
>>
>> (I have not seen the earth for years
>> and think now possibly "dirt" is
>> negative, positive, but clearly
>> social. I cannot plant a seed, cannot
>> recognize the root with clearer dent
>> than indifference. Though I eat
>> and shit as a natural man. (Getting up
>> from the desk to secure a turkey sandwich
>> and answer the phone: the poem undone
>> undone by my station, by my station,
>> and the bad words of Newark.) Raised up
>> to the breech, we seek to fill for this
>> crumbling century. The darkness of love,
>> in whose sweating memory all error is forced.
>>
>>
>> Undone by the logic of any specific death. (Old gentlemen
>> who still follow fires, tho are quieter
>> and less punctual. It is a polite truth
>> we are left with. Who are you? What are you
>> saying? Something to be dealt with, as easily.
>> The noxious game of reason, saying, "No, No,
>> you cannot feel," like my dead lecturer
>> lamenting thru gipsies his fast suicide.
>>
>>
>> --Amiri Baraka (1964)
>>
>>
>> fr. Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones,
>> 1961-1995
>> [New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1995]
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