Viva La Vie Boheme
Amiri Baraka (also known as Leroi Jones) was a founding member of the Black Arts Movement. An inspiration to many, he was never afraid to speak out against cultural problems and oppression. Baraka uses allusions in his poem “In Memory of Radio” to express that he would rather be isolated from those in his society than contribute to the losses caused by mainstream culture.
In the second stanza of the poem Baraka plays on a popular quote.
“Is it better to have loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?” (340)
Satirizing Alfred Lord Tennyson’s lines from his well known elegy, “In Memoriam A.H.H,” Baraka evokes current kitchen remodeling trends. People were into “modernizing” their homes, which included swapping out their carpets in favor of linoleum floors. Baraka makes it clear that he would rather love someone and risk losing that love, then to conform to the society and place the tiling in his house. It is a subtle act of defiance, but it represents the fact that the Beat’s were willing to distance themselves from mainstream culture in any way they could.
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Baraka then suggests that he is not an all-knowing prophet. He has no magical powers, and very little political power. He says,
“I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goody Knight.” (Baraka 340)
Satori means enlightenment. How can you have a gas chamber (exterminating) enlightenment? Baraka means that if you eliminate something (or adopt something) blindly just because you are told it will make you and society “better,” but in fact, the effect will be death. People following the strict guidelines of what culture should-and-should not be was leading to a death in art and individualism.
Baraka then makes another bold statement,
“& Love is an evil word.” (340)
Baraka says that if you read ‘love’ backwards, it would spell ‘evol’ which sounds like evil. Therefore, love is evil. The things that people “loved” were causing chaos and harm. This “love” of pop culture was taking the capacity for unique expression out of society. Loving something no longer had any romantic connotation, no conflict. Instead, it just meant you accepted what you were told to enjoy. Baraka preferred true love, even if it was something he would lose.
“In Memory of Radio” is not only about the loss of a radio. It is a lament for the loss of everything that Baraka and the people around him were experiencing. He knew radio, and more generally, pop culture, was something he would not be a part of and he took measures to distance himself from the conformists.
Baraka, Amiri. “In Memory of Radio” The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 340–341.
