Interview with Amiri Baraka | Sound Authors Radio

December 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors.  It’s Friday November 21st.  This week is the week of thanksgiving and much more.  It’s the leaves have started to fall off the trees, its beautiful weather; crisp air, you can see the stars at night and feel the chill – even inside.  It’s a wonderful time of year.  We’ve got three guests on the show today.  At the very end of the show a fellow named Michael Cleveland, who won five international bluegrass music association fiddle player of the year awards.  Then I’ve got a new author on the show named Carson Gilmore.  He’s got a book called Boy on Fire.  My special guest is at the beginning of the show today.  His name is Amiri Baraka and he’s a world famous poet, writer, activist and its such an honor to have him on the show.  He’s won many awards and we’ll talk to him right now.  Welcome to the show Amiri Baraka.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah, how ya doin?

Dr. Kent:  I’m doing great.  How are you?

Amiri Baraka:  I’m okay, I’m alright.  I’m looking out the window at this beautiful fall day just before it turns cold.

Dr. Kent:  Exactly.  Let me ask you just to start out as a book that just is coming out in January 2009 in a couple of months of your essays from the 60s called Home, Social Essays and there’s a piece in here during one of the essays where you talk about hope and you said the old folks kept singing there will be a better day or the suns going to shine in my back door someday, and I’ve had my fun if I don’t get well no more, then what would that fun turn out to be and you said hope is a delicate suffering.  And I wanted to ask you about that because Barack Obama just became the President elect and he ran on hope.  What are your thoughts about that?

Amiri Baraka:  Well I think we all experienced that delicate suffering you know fighting for him.  I made several appearances speaking.  Not officially of course but in forums and groups urging them to support Barack Obama because to me its just part of the civil rights movement.  I see it as the fruition of the struggles of people like Dr. King, Carmichael and Malcolm X.

I feel it’s the fruition of their struggles at a much higher level and because of the inherent democratic content of that struggle, it raises the whole society to another level and we are approaching yet another cross roads.  I mean capitalism obviously but capitalism, Barack’s in a position where he has to take on the battle of FDR, Franklin Roosevelt and I hope that in those first 100 days he can throw 100 left hooks and jabs and right crosses and get some kind of legislation passed that can transform this society as much as it can be transformed under this kind of debt.

Dr. Kent:  You share sort of a namesake.  Your last name is Baraka and Barack of course.

Amiri Baraka:  It’s the same root.

Dr. Kent:  Exactly and he as been widely of course the media is saying oh, he’s a Muslim and saying that’s a negative thing.  I believe your still Muslim yourself and.

Amiri Baraka:  No I was never Muslim.  I was given my name by the guy who ### Malcolm X ### but in fact I changed the name that was given to me Baracka, which is Arabic.  Swahili is about a couple hundred miles south and changed it to Baraka, which is Swahili.  You know because I wanted to emphasize that Barack aspect of it.  But the name was given to me by a man who I thought was an important Muslim imam so I’ve never been far from that learning anyway but I’ve never been in the religion.  I’m not a religious person, I’m a communist.

Dr. Kent:  What do you think about the people that are so anti-Muslim?  Because you obviously it’s a proud name for you and what are your thoughts about this country towards Muslims?

Amiri Baraka:  Like I said, I’m not religious.  You don’t have to be religious like Malcolm X said keep your religion at home, keep your religion in the church or the temple, you know what I mean?  But in terms of the fairs for democracy and equal rights and I think that what’s happening.  You have some people bothering their pyramids and they go and bother them back.  Now you can blame it on Islam if you want, but it’s not about Islam it’s about the fact of oppression and people resisting oppression.

Now a lot of stuff that some of these right wing so called Muslim groups, I don’t go for that either.  You know, I never thought suicide was especially neuveau riche you know?  But at the same time, you can’t blame the religion; that would be like blaming Judaism on Israel.  Or Blaming Christianity on the United States.  You can’t do that.  I mean that’s a nonsecutor.

Dr. Kent:  So let me ask you about one of your more controversial moments recently.  Of course after September 11 as the poet laureate of new jersey you wrote a poem Somebody Blew Up America; an extraordinary piece of writing and had some controversial statements in it, but its poetry.  Then New Jersey passed some legislation to oust you because of that poem.  Is that correct?

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah and that’s because of the piece that I did.  They couldn’t look at me as the poet laureate in New Jersey; they would have to go back in time as far as ipso facto so what they did was they eliminated the post of poet laureate so that New Jersey now is officially ignorant.  There is no poet laureate unlike other states; we are just content to be poet laureateless.  The thing was that the ADL which should file papers about the needs of a foreign power, whether it be the Jews or anyone else, they threw that sand up in the air to blind people because they thought we were saying something negative about Israel.

The point is this, if you can’t even question a foreign country without being termed anti-politic well what have we got to?  I can’t question what’s going on in Dafur or the Congo without being called anti-black.  It’s very silly but it serves as good sense as long as it lasts.  Any time you raise questions about illegal activities if it’s a sovereign and fearless state then somebody wants to say your anti-Jewish, which might be a good defense if you think about it, but people have discovered that a disguise and they’re trying to masquerade the actual evil ###.  So what are we supposed to do with the Palestinians?  It’s crazy.

Dr. Kent:  I have a question for you about the introduction that you’ve written in this new edition of home social essays.  You talked about some of the imagery that you used in the 60s was from the streets and included some anti-homosexual slurs and things like that.  Tell me how you’ve changed over the years, in the last 40 years.

Amiri Baraka:  When we were in the states of miller growing up you’re not talking about them being homosexual, you’re talking about them being lets say courageless, but even that doesn’t wash in terms of talking about gay people because a lot of gay people would knock you out so it doesn’t actually wash in those terms but that’s what I said.  You know, my use of that whole kind of steep language and I did several of these in the late 50s and my use of that steep language seemed to be okay.  So that’s why I wrote that.  In fact, I don’t even know why I considered that for my book cover when I have some that still have to be published; you know my contemporary political contribution.

Dr. Kent:  Let me ask you out of pure curiosity.  You’ve done a lot of work with jazz musicians and in that field and you have a poem in one of your latest books Tales of the Out and Gone about Monk and having sort of cited monk.  Who did you know?  Who did you meet?  I know that Coletrain was one of your favorites and you did some work with his son Ron.  Talk about jazz back in the day.

Amiri Baraka:  Well, I was always into music since I was a kid and I think I got into bebop when I was in junior high school.  When I was going to junior high school my cousin gave me all of his records and introduced me to Charley Parker, Stan Getz and all of those people and that’s when I became passionately interested in music because that music opened me up intellectually.  It made me think of things I had never thought of before, that had occurred to me.  From the language, you know the way he used to talk about these cats and things.

I picked that up as a teenager and it never stopped.  Then I went into college and the Air Force and I listened to the music all the time and then when I came home and I had a chance to go to New York and meet Malcolm and meet Tussad and be in the village and meet with Tussad, some of that was serendipitous move.  I moved into an apartment right over ###.  So definitely it’s a strange mix.  So I happened to live nearly over the spot where monk and Chaney lived.  We lived together and you can hear the results of that on ### at Carnegie Hall.

Dr. Kent:  That’s amazing.

Amiri Baraka:  That’s what I said!  But its more amazing to look back at that chain, my God its an incredible idea but then I got to know them because I used to hang at all the joints, the Village Stage, the Village Vanguard and the ###.  It was two blocks up the street from my house.  All those places, I spent my whole growing up period hovering around inside those places.  That was the whole basis under penning my writing because I would write about music, which is also a way of developing the skill of writing.  I loved them, I loved their music, but remember, in the sixties and the early 70s it was possibly ### Miles Davis, Coletrain on the same night.  All of them have passed away.

That whole era has passed and we are confronted now with the age generation and the ability to kick it up and eventually they will.  Like the Golden Age in the 20s and the 30s.  Charlie Parker was there, Miles Davis and so that will happen again and the music will reconstitute itself and get past the confusion ###.  Even like poetry; poetry will have to get past this negative pall that they put over it.  So it’s a question of how do the arts reflect the state of society?  Society is in its backward period, which hopefully we have left with the leaving of Bush.  I hope he goes to jail but I think the society now has a chance to recover and to make progress again.  In the 60s when there was all that turbulence there was also a lot of progress and a lot of determination with equality and equal rights so that was reflected in the arts.

Dr. Kent:  You talked about Bush leaving office and at the end of the latest book of new writing called Tales of the Out and Gone you talk about Bush as a cowboy and its fascinating the level of anger you’re able to put in that chapter in that short story.  Talk about what he’s done to the country.

Amiri Baraka:  Well I mean the fact that first he’s stolen and squandered the US surplus gotten under Clinton; he’s spending now at this late date ten billion dollars a month on a war who’s only practical aim is to enrich the success of his friends that control the economy here.  He just gave a trillion dollars to the banks.  I mean give me a break.  A trillion dollars to the banks?  To do what, make sure the rich people stay rich?  Not to bail out the 6,000 people a day who are losing their homes.  Bush, at the end of this completely disastrous tour in which we have seen from 9/11 which I do not ### to the Arabs.  I still think it’s not actively part of it, though actively not trying to stop it.

Why?  Because it has enabled them to go into Afghanistan, to go into Iraq, to support ethnic cleansing in Khuzestan to support the invasion of Iraq; to get into Iran.  And now, stupidly, by getting entangled in some scuffle with the Russians to get into it with the North Koreans and have their secret hatred of course, the Chinese we are up to their necks in debt to so they cant do too much mischief; so this is what Bush has done.  The republican matrix that has all but destroyed this country and it only gives reign which has instituted homeland security, a kind of neo-fascist over the citizens of the United States.  He opened a gulag in Guantanamo, which is ironic because this gulag on the Cuban soil to frustrate and challenge them being guilty of torture ### the most bloodthirsty and guilt ridden steps in the regime that we’ve had.

Otherwise, how do you think a black man got to be president of the United States?  The Americans themselves have come to the end of their rope.  They go, it can’t be worse than this!  It can’t be worse than this.  So this is the fourth revolution that’s been had in America.  The first one of course eliminated the British; the second one was the civil war with the whole black desegregation and civil rights movement in the sixties and this fourth one, the election of Barack Obama.  So we’re actually at the threshold of taking the steps.

What he’s going to have to do to correct this evil that Bush has created is he’s going to have to take certain social democratic steps.  Like the question of universal healthcare.  The question of making education available the way it can be in community service.  This parallels actually ### because at the end of Hoover’s destructive reign, the republicans destructive reign and ###.  You know the whole question of unemployment insurance and social security.  Those are socialist programs that Roosevelt adapted and used.  Actually they say capitalism and that’s what Barack Obama is going to have to do, stop capitalism.

To me, many aspects of social democratic policy, that has been the policy in Europe for years and years.  But of course he will meet a lot of loud mouth rich people and loud mouth ignorant people and that’s why I say he’s got to strike quickly in his first 100 days.

Dr. Kent:  Well here’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in this election is that its amazing that black people came out and voted and its amazing to see how emotional everyone got.  The day that Obama got elected the pundits on TV were talking and talking and talking, and the second that he was declared the winner it was almost like there was shock to all the people on TV, even though they knew it was going to happen.  There’s like this shock on their faces; they were crying, even the republicans were amazed.  I think even to the last second people said this couldn’t possibly happen.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah well this is a new era.  I was in Italy that night and it could’ve been the United States.  I mean, people were transfixed.  I had been in Italy ten days and I was telling people over there if you’ve got relatives in the United States call them up and tell them to vote.  I know a lot of them were going to school and I said call them up to vote.  But the whole mood in Europe was very hopeful; they hoped that Obama would win.

I mean especially young people, but all people are fed up with George Bush and fed up with the craziness of us foreign policy and the kind of weight it had put on the world and they were actually relieved.  Some people made a joke about now we’ve got a president that doesn’t even need a tan, but it’s true.  And if you think its insulting about the tan, I don’t, it’s true.  You’ve got to live with that.  So it’s the possibility of a new era.  The point is that those of us on the ground, its up to us to insist on change.  Its time for that fragility to give way to actuality.

Dr. Kent:  I have sort of a unique hope that, my fiancé and I were talking about the rich somehow have been able to put one over on basically the poor whites.  You know, working class white people to vote for the republicans because of guns, God, gays and all that but the blacks always knew who to vote for.  The poor blacks knew but the poor whites are the ones that turned the election and I have hope that maybe they’ve caught on.  They need to vote their own interests.

Amiri Baraka:  I think first of all that’s overstated.  It’s true that racism is like a drug and it’s really about white supremacy.  White supremacy is like a drug, there’s no doubt about it and a lot of the ignorant, and the poor unfortunately have succumbed to that a long time ago and can’t take it.  I wrote a piece called American Junkies a couple of months ago talking about the thing that’s plagues the united states is this addiction called white supremacy, even though it doesn’t serve its interest.  The last thing we should be doing is voting for McCain and empowering the right wing that’s going to just bleed them dry.  You understand?

But that’s the legacy of this addiction of white supremacy and they’ve been addicted since the 17th Century and its been reinforced in every way possible.  By the educational system, the media, by politicians; there was a crazy politician, where was he from? Down there in the south, Alabama I think who talked about Obama is a communist, a Muslim and there’s another guy in Michigan who put on his clown suit the day after the election and stood out in the street to protest the fact.  Then another one in the Young Americans for freedom who was saying that Obama is a communist Muslim and that the right people oppress and I say this.

That’s a white supremacy virtue, not only are they oppressed but they can be oppressed in a day.  And I’m thinking wow, it takes longer than a day, a week, but that’s the kind of madness.  You’re listening to the junkies; you’re listening to people who are addicted.  The possibility they can’t shoot up on white supremacy again leaves them in a state of complete disorganization.  They don’t know their butts from a hole in the ground.

Dr. Kent:  Well there were a couple of things on the campaign trail; I mean I started to get really nervous.  I’m happy because Obama has won, things have cooled down quite a bit but when McCain started pulling out all the stops and people started screaming and going crazy it felt like everything was just being unleashed publicly.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah well it’s like Hitler.  If you go back and look at the last republic in Germany where Hitler rose, that’s what they were doing.  They had their storm troops on the street they were smashing and breaking windows out of Jewish stores and whatnot, and then the thing that gave them real power like 911 was the burning of the reischeguard.  And the minute the reisheguard was burned they then passed something called the Reichstag enablement act and the first thing they did was lock up trade unionists, communists, Jews and other minorities like gypsies and a couple of black people over there and then they ran them out.

And McCain struck me as the kind of weak kneed politician who might be like the chancellor of Germany who just gave power to the Nazis.  Actually Bush it was less legal the way he got into power, he stole the election.  He got into power less legal than Hitler who was appointed by the head of state.  So we’re on very shaky ground.  We’re on extremely shaky ground; a bankrupt country fighting a war that it cannot win and McCain’s policies; those last speeches about he wants to distribute the wealth, I want to create wealth.

Its kind of like head up your ass popularism, you know what I mean?  Don’t you understand what he just said?  Don’t you understand what he just said?  But it’s demographically flying beneath the radar when he says crazy things and people say wait, they’re going to kill me tomorrow.

Dr. Kent:  Well it’s been a real honor speaking with Amiri Baraka.  He’s got a website online; amiribaraka.com and there’s some great stuff on there including an mp3 of some great work as well as some poetry on there and everything of people should show up and check that out.  Somebody Blew Up America; I listened to that whole mp3.  It’s an amazing reading, with some jazz musicians’ passionate reading of that.  What’s your next project?

Amiri Baraka:  I’ve got two books coming out in a month or so.  One is called Digging, the Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music.  That’s about jazz of course, the focus of my writings over the last 20 years, and there’s another book called Razor, Revolutionary Art for Culture Revolution.  This is about and there are a lot of essays about it, the last 20 years of revolutionary art.  It’s about writing, painting and the whole need for revolutionary art in the United States. It’s about winning the minds of the American people away from atheists, away from people at NBC, Mickey Mouse, and Fox.  So those two books are coming out and then in February I’ll be in Paris for the tenure of jazz opera that I wrote with David Murray the saxophone player called ###.  We’re going to do an ###.  So those are the two things that I’m working on.

Dr. Kent:  Sounds like an exciting new year coming up.

Amiri Baraka:  Hopefully, I just hope that excitement is compounded by some real political advance from our president elect.

Dr. Kent:  Amen to that.  Well it’s been an honor speaking with Amiri Baraka and we wish him all the best, I hope to speak with him again.

Amiri Baraka:  Thank you very much.

Dr. Kent:  We can check him out on the web at amiribaraka.com.  We talked a little about Tales from the Out and Gone and Home: Social Essays and he’s got two more coming out.  Digging, which I’ll be excited to see about some music and much more.  Thank you so much.  My next guest on the show will be Carson Gilmore and he will speak about his new novel called Boy on Fire.  Come on back for that.

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Interview with Nadeem Aslam | Sound Authors Radio

December 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  It’s my great honor to have on the show the award-winning author of The Wasted Vigil.  It’s a novel by Nadeem Aslam and welcome to the show.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much for inviting me.

Dr. Kent:  How are you doing this evening?

Nadeem Aslam:  I’m very well, yes.

Dr. Kent:  And are you speaking to us from?

Nadeem Aslam:  I am studying in London.

Dr. Kent:  So it is evening.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes.

Dr. Kent:  Tell me about this book.  It’s been such a success, were you expecting it to do so well?

Nadeem Aslam:  No I think as a writer you just try to expose your own life, your own consciousness, but I as a writer always begin with the firm belief that I am an ordinary human being, that I am one of the six billion people on the planet.  So if anything is true of me, it is possibly true of a lot of other people out there.  So that is how books become successful or unsuccessful I think.  So no, I was just trying to understand this more than political chaos that we, the world, seem to have found in the post 9/11 world.  In the Wasted Vigil I trace the origins and head back to Afghanistan and I wanted to tell Afghanistan’s story.

Also because I thought that it had been forgotten and this is going to sound like a strange statement because Afghanistan is in the news every single day, how can it be that it is forgotten when you see it in the news everyday?  But what it is doing to the rest of the world; so many American soldiers have died, so many Canadian soldiers have died, so many British soldiers have died.  But what the world is to Afghanistan over the last 30 years seems to have been forgotten as I’ve said.  It seems to be news to most people.

Never mind the involvement of the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia and the United States and Pakistan in the 1980s and early 90s.  Something as recent as the Taliban, which started 30 years ago; people read my book and then come to me and say we never realized the Taliban were that bad.  So I think it was important to document things because the past was slipping away from peoples minds.

Dr. Kent:  When you were writing this book, what goes into that process for you?  How much of yourself goes in there, how much research goes in?

Nadeem Aslam:  I often wonder if I do any research at all.  All in all they are simply that interesting, it is in my mind the most; that is what goes down my arm and into my fingers and then onto the page.  There are times that things I am interested in like jazz, painting, the making of perfumes, the natural world; I know them but I’m interested in the cycle of plants and things.  But there are times when interests have to be deepened for the purpose of the novel.  So in The Wasted Vigil, I wanted to go to Afghanistan and I know I would need a Visa.

So I began to talk to afghan refugees; I thought I would put their story together through their memories as it were.  I talked to about 200 afghan refugees and I would ask them specific questions like tell me about the house you grew up in or tell me about your family?  Also I had the idea and its something that’s very important to me being as I’m a writer.  And that was I would ask them if it’s April, what kinds of birds are there in the garden?  If it’s June, what kinds of flowers are there?  What is the color of the sky in September?  As a writer I need to know these things.

And of course, some of the stories these people told were horrifying because these were all refugees and you could see that parts of the vigil and some of the readers have said that.  The book is very beautiful and that it is very terrifying also; it’s distressing.  But you know, nothing in the book is made up and I would quote Tony Morrison who said “If they can live it, I can write it.”  And I would go one step further and say that “if they can live it, you can read it.”  I don’t see anything as a virtue that has to be extended in that innocence.  There was a time for innocence; now I am an adult and it is my duty to look at the world and to pinpoint what is wrong with it and celebrate what is right with it.

Dr. Kent:  Its such an honorable task to be able to write about the conflict that’s at the center of all of the news really, so central to the news in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Talk about the situation there and your feelings on it right now.

Nadeem Aslam:  I don’t have these rigid ideologies and what can be the consequence of rigid ideologies and we see them at play.  In the novel I have a character who is a war orphan in Afghanistan and who is in their 20s; who as a child was beaten and raped and who as a young teenager beat others and raped others.  These are very objectionable things but then we think what would you expect for someone who’s had that kind of life?  What did we think was going to be the result of all of that?  And of course there are other rigid ideologies in the novel that men should think women should have in the society.

On a wider scale, two of my characters are Americans staying in Palestine inside of town and they do have rigid ideologies about Americas place in the world and how America should maintain its position in the world.  The word vigil is a derivative of vigilant or vigilante and appears seven times in my novel and each time they are connected to one of the main characters.  Each of those vigils is wasted but we cannot look at the world these sort of pastime beliefs and not be able to bend.  In this book, I wanted to see what would happen if various people from various nationalities were forced to live together in a house for about a fortnight and I thought lets see what would happen.

How soon would our beliefs, and our nationalities, and our ideologies fall away and the common thing that we are under the clothes, which is a human being.  How soon would that become apparent?  And of course the other way around as well.  How soon would our common humanity be sidelined because ideologies are at stake?  So that is what I wanted to explore.  And lastly what is happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan and of course we just had the attack in Mumbai and the terrorists came from Pakistan.

The Pakistani government must bear the responsibility.  It’s not good enough for president Suhdai to say that Pakistan too is suffering at the hands of terrorists.  Until the Pakistani government, until the Pakistani military, until the Pakistani secret service and Pakistani society has proved that it can do, that it has done everything possible to eradicate the terrorists, until they have done that, they are not allowed to say that.  To say there is nothing, what can we do as a country?  You know?  I mean I was in Pakistan earlier this year and everybody there knows that one of these terrorist organizations ### Mohammed, who are responsible for these attacks in Mumbai, they are constructing a huge focus like Mandessa in the main town in Punjab, and this is an organization that has been banned.

Pakistan’s government says it has banned it and everyone knows.  Its in the newspapers, I saw it myself, I know there are terrorist training camps; I know and every person like me, without meaning to manage to talk to more than a dozen young men who had been to terrorist training camps.  How can the Pakistani government say we don’t know where their camps are?  Of course they know where the camps are and more should be done.

Dr. Kent:  And its such a difficult issue, I know I’ve spent time myself in Palestine and being in areas where people don’t feel good about an occupation or about the western world.  There’s so much of that in your writing, there’s so much pain and suffering.  How do you go about on a daily basis dealing with all of this material, putting it in your novel, and not internalizing it too much?

Nadeem Aslam:  Well I think in the Mosul, as I said I hope that the difficulties that we are facing in the world, they are in the novel counterbalanced by the beauty that exists in this world; love, friendship, family.  Something ordinary like going out for a drink with friends.  I was talking about the connection that we human beings make.  That is the message that I hope is revealed.  Right at the end Lara, who is one of the main characters, when she goes back to Russia from Afghanistan; she’s a Russian woman.

When she goes back she takes away from the house fragments from one of a picture that has fallen off of the wall.  The fragment that she takes away is where the skin, the bodies of the two lovers come together.  That small piece is what we have to hold on to and as I said there are difficulties in the world that we human beings seem to be facing at the moment but intelligently, patiently we have to look at them and we have to analyze them and try to eradicate them.  One of the things that we must make sure is we cannot confuse all Muslims as terrorists, that is the mistake I think we have to avoid because if you study the statements that someone like Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda #2 ### has put out way since the beginning, and if you study them sequentially, and you can go to the internet and have a look at them.

Nowadays there are a number of very good books which collect all the statements of these people.  You’ll see that these people are in torment over the fact that the world has for better or worse managed to make a decision that it’s all Muslims and Islamists.  What they wanted was that the whole world to stand up and say that every Muslim and Islamic on this planet is a troublemaker, but that hasn’t happened.  I don’t agree with many things that President Bush has done during his time at the White House, but one of the good things that he did was immediately after 9/11 he took off his shoes and he went off and he went into that Mosque in Washington DC because it sent a clear message not only to the bigots in America, because if you remember, in the days following 9/11 a number of dark skinned gentlemen with long beards had been shot dead for retaliation as it were.

So that sent a message to the bigots in America saying that we understand that the people who flew those planes into those office buildings have nothing to do with people who come into this mosque.  But it also sent a message to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda that we understand that you are separate from these people, that we are actually going to stand side by side with these people and try to eradicate you.

Dr. Kent:  There’s two things that brings to mind; one is Cat Stevens, one of my favorite singers who Yusef Islam who has come out with many albums and they’re all about peace and my experience with people of Islam say we’re the religion of peace and its such a shame that the world thinks of even the worlds Jihad the struggle as being a violent awful thing.  How does that find its way into your work?

Nadeem Aslam:  But this violence came to exist in the novel.  For example, my book is set in this house in Afghanistan and when Lara the Russian woman enters in the house and the house is owned by an Englishman who had many years ago married an Afghanistan woman and it was their home.  During the Taliban regime Marcus the Englishman and his wife had gone to fight in the Taliban, who said that only one book was allowed to exist in the world and that was the Koran.  So nothing else was allowed to exist; from Homer to Makita to the Bible or John Updike, so Marcus’ wife moved her library to the ceiling so that every book in the house is nailed to the ceiling.

So when Lara comes into this strange house she sees that all the ceiling is covered with books and there is this gentle terrain as it was because there these books up there.  But as I said, we cannot deny that a violent interpretation of Islam is possible and at the moment it seems to be the most visible one because the people that are doing this are the ones who have the weapons and the people who don’t are afraid of them.  What would happen and it does happen in Pakistan when a newspaper writer is going against what the Taliban are doing.  But the editor and the columnist need police protection so there is intimidation.

But as I said slowly and patiently, we mustn’t lose heart and in the meantime, one of my favorite poets is ###, the great English poet who won the Nobel Prize some years ago was his point about Stalin, who when Stalin had ### murdered, he wrote a poem.  Saying you who wronged a simple man drew laughter at the crime.  Get a pack of food around you to mix good with evil to blur the lines.  Do not feel safe, the poet remembers.  You can kill one, but another is born.  The word will come down; the deed, the date.  So I think as a writer I see that as my responsibility.  To write down the word, the deeds, and the dates and have that as a reminder, a memorial.

Dr. Kent:  You are from Pakistan and you have written two novels.  Your first two novels were about Pakistan.  Did you see a big difference between setting a novel in Pakistan as say one set in Afghanistan?

Nadeem Aslam:  No I think they were ###.  We talk about human beings and throughout this interview I’ve been saying that one of my deepest beliefs is that underneath it all we’re all the same and that is that.  It is political, ideological and a different social matrix that we draw.  That is what bends our lives and our character and even our bodies differently, but ultimately we are all the same.  In my first novel, I was writing about mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends; and in the second novel too and also in the third novel.

We are all human beings.  You could say that the cast in the Wasted Vigil is like international; I have Americans, I have afghans, I have an Englishman and I have a Russian, but I was able to write them because I believe that there is a great deal of similarity.  By that I don’t mean that here we have this bourgeois individual that thinks he can go into anyone’s history, any country’s history, and country’s story and say I am able to make anything I can with it, no?  If I want to write about a Russian character I have to enter Russian history from a place of great humility.  I have to try to understand it, I have to understand how our stories and our ideas form and how deeply connected we are with them.  So I enter everyone’s story with great humbleness and if I make a mistake I apologize, and that goes to everyone.  From Saudi Arabians, to Russians, to Americans.

Dr. Kent:  One of the most powerful things in a society that is sort of split in any different way is to tell stories.  Living in Palestine and in the middle east for some time, the stories I tell people are of sitting down to tea and staying with three or four hours with total strangers.  Something that wouldn’t exist now where I live in New York and hospitality that people could never imagine and all you see on the news is violence or poverty and things like that.  What’s so beautiful about your novels is that it brings people into that world.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much.  One of the things, I think at one point in the novel The Wasted Vigil, Marcus says stories are how we judge our actions before committing them.  So I think stories can be a warning as well.  I wanted to explore in the Wasted Vigil whether it was possible for us to show power, for us to go into another country and play its political games and expect there not to be any consequences.  And I’m talking about what happened in the 1980s when first the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan and then the United States with the help of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia decided that they were going to defeat the Soviet Union.

Once the Soviet Union was defeated in 1989, once they withdrew, the United States withdrew its gaze as it were.  It looked away but billions of dollars of work had gone into that country and there had to be consequences and those consequences were apparent for the afghan people immediately because a civil war began in 1990.  Straight away the war lords began to fight for the spoils as it were but it took another 11 years until 9/11 happened for those consequences to become apparent to the rest of the world.  So yes, now here we are in Iraq.  The United States is in Iraq.

Dr. Kent:  Its such a complicated web; just looking at the works of Michael Moore and other honest journalists alike, a lot of European journalists that have honest reporting that talk about that web between Russia and Afghanistan and Iraq and the political ties to the united states and all of this.  Most people in this country are quite naïve because it’s not reported here.

Nadeem Aslam:  Absolutely!  I mean I think sometimes of July in Washington when it was said the spokes of this wheel that’s the sore spot of the earth.  The United States is very intimately involved, has been over the past 30, 40, 50 years and have been interfering with their governments but I come from a country, Pakistan, where you can’t not be aware of politics because politics is visceral there.

I was in Washington DC earlier this year and I used to go walk around the capital building and the White House and I would think how in the 1980s, certain decisions, certain boring, quiet decisions made in those places, that we must defeat Iraq and Iran, the soviet union and enter Pakistan and get help from Saudi Arabia and what have you.  How these decisions, which not many in America knew and when those decisions went to Pakistan, went to my part of the world, it became physical things like fists and hammers, who broke the bones of the bodies of people who were protesting against the regime there.

So in the west and in America perhaps, it is possible for human beings to live quite a good and decent life if he or she decides that he wants nothing to do with politics.  But in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, we don’t have that luxury.  We have to get involved with politics.

Dr. Kent:  So is there hope in Afghanistan and Pakistan of new hope with Barack Obama being elected.

Nadeem Aslam:  I think that remains to be seen.  Nobody out there is innocent; I really think that the Pakistani government needs to do more.  In the Pakistani Press, which I read every day on the net, President Obama isn’t very popular because he’s made statements which people are not happy with.

Dr. Kent:  Right, he made the statement about crossing into Pakistan without Pakistan’s authorization.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, indeed, yes but this whole thing I’m sure Pakistan’s government knows; they take care of raids every week.  Houses are being destroyed and people are being killed.  Some of them are Al Qaeda and Taliban but other people are dying throughout the region and they are drones who are firing missiles into the Kabul area.  So as I said these people are actually damaging Pakistan as well.  So a way has to be found out of this what I said earlier, this modern, political chaos that Pakistan is in, but patiently it has to be done.  We mustn’t lose hope, there’s always hope.

Dr. Kent:  You said you read the Pakistani Press everyday.  Do you read it in Urdu?

Nadeem Aslam:  I read it in Urdu every day, yes.

Dr. Kent:  Wow, so you’re able to keep it up.

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, well I mean I was in Pakistan for the first 14 years of my life and really writing about Afghanistan was for me inevitable because it is so linked with my past life in that when the soviet union invaded Afghanistan and the united states went in, the CIA went in and began to pull weapons into Pakistan, there were people who were warning against the consequences.  What would happen once the Soviet Union was gone?  They were saying and these people were writers, poets, journalists and some of them were from my family.  So things were getting hard for us and in 1982 we had to leave.

My father had to flee the country so actually I wouldn’t be here in England if it wasn’t for Afghanistan.  So it’s that feeling of dealing with my life and once again not to go back and say that politics isn’t something gory, it is so deeply linked with our day to life, it shapes our life so I follow it.  Whenever we think of the problems facing the world, the political dimension is always there in our understanding of the world as it were.

Dr. Kent:  As a child on Wikipedia it says you published your first short story at 13.  When did you start thinking as a writer?  Were your parents writers?

Nadeem Aslam:  My father was a poet and as a young man he wrote poetry, but being from the continent Americans have arranged for him and the children came very quickly and he had to go out and find a job.  There has always been a kind of wound in my father, that he thinks that his real life didn’t happen; because of me I suppose.  I was his son and he had to earn a living when he should have been writing I suppose, I don’t know.  He goes under the name Ramik Saleem and in the universe of my novels, the great Pakistani poet is called Ramik Saleem and he appears in all three of my novels and he will make a small appearance in every single one of my future books as well.  So I’ve done it for him for real in the world of my books what he couldn’t do in real life because of me.

Dr. Kent:  Are you working on a new novel now?

Nadeem Aslam:  Yes, I’m working on a novel centered in Pakistan so I will be dealing with these things that we’ve been talking about.  These things seem relevant only because of what has happened over the last seven or eight years but 9/11 was a visual and spectacular manifestation of what was going on within the Islamic world anyway.  The fight between military and the Muslims as it were.  My first novel, which was published ten or eleven years before Al Qaeda became a word, and Jihad and before 9/11 happened.  It was about these issues so I would still be writing the books that I’m writing if 9/11 hadn’t happened as it were.  There are any number of writers who said that on the morning of 9/11 they looked at the TV and said the book I’m working on is worthless, that it really seems unimportant now.  At that time, I was writing a novel called The Lost Lovers and I remember looking at the screen and thinking there is my novel on the screen.

Dr. Kent:  Right, and having been in the middle east before it happened, it’s a horrible thing just because we’ve seen these images of the airplanes but the numbers coming out of Iraq that maybe more than 100,000 people have died.

Nadeem Aslam:  No, you are absolutely; as I said, this thing has gotten worse over the past seven years.  Of course I don’t deny that.  Of course, but as a writer as I said I begin as only a human being and I don’t know why we went into Iraq.  I don’t have access to the classified documents over there at the Pentagon and at the White House and what have you.  So I can only articulate what my confusion and my grief.  Absolutely you’re right; this thing has got worse over the past seven years, yes.

Dr. Kent:  Well your writing certainly has not gotten worse over the past years.  I can’t wait to see the next novel come out.  This is a beautiful book called The Wasted Vigil.  It’s by Nadeem Aslam and I can’t wait to continue reading your things.  This has been a wonderful discussion; it certainly has made my week.

Nadeem Aslam:  Thank you very much for having me.

Dr. Kent:  And my next guest on the show is a world famous bluegrass musician, Del McCoury.  We recorded it earlier today and I’ll play that in its entirety starting right after this little break.  Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Religion, TRANSCRIPTS, History, Politics, Fiction, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, Poetry, PODCAST 

Nikki Giovanni | Poetry & Politics

December 5, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Nikki Giovanni: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What a pleasure to speak to poet and children’s author Nikki Giovanni! More about her from her website:Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Over the past thirty years, her outspokenness, in her writing and in lectures, has brought the eyes of the world upon her. One of the most widely-read American poets, she prides herself on being “a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English.” Giovanni remains as determined and committed as ever to the fight for civil rights and equality. Always insisting on presenting the truth as she sees it, she has maintained a prominent place as a strong voice of the Black community. Her focus is on the individual, specifically, on the power one has to make a difference in oneself, and thus, in the lives of others.NIKKI GIOVANNI was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She and her sister spent their summers with their grandparents in Knoxville, and she graduated with honors from Fisk University, her grandfather’s alma mater, in 1968; after graduating from Fisk, she attended the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk, in 1968, and within the next year published a second book, thus launching her career as a writer. Early in her career she was dubbed the “Princess of Black Poetry,” and over the course of more than three decades of publishing and lecturing she has come to be called both a “National Treasure” and, most recently, one of Oprah Winfrey’s twenty-five “Living Legends.”Many of Giovanni’s books have received honors and awards. Her autobiography, Gemini, was a finalist for the National Book Award; Love Poems, Blues: For All the Changes, and Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea were all honored with NAACP Image Awards. Blues: For All the Changes reached #4 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list, a rare achievement for a book of poems. Most recently, her children’s picture book Rosa, about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks, became a Caldecott Honors Book, and Bryan Collier, the illustrator, was given the Coretta Scott King award for best illustration. Rosa also reached #3 on The New York Times Bestseller list.Giovanni’s spoken word recordings have also achieved widespread recognition and honors. Her album Truth Is On Its Way, on which she reads her poetry against a background of gospel music, was a top 100 album and received the Best Spoken Word Album given by the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers. Her Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, on which she reads and talks about her poetry, was one of five finalists for a Grammy Award.Giovanni’s honors and awards have been steady and plentiful throughout her career. The recipient of some twenty-five honorary degrees, she has been named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine, The Ladies Home Journal, and Ebony Magazine. She was tapped for the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame and named an Outstanding Woman of Tennessee. Giovanni has also received Governor’s Awards from both Tennessee and Virginia. She was the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and she has also been awarded the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. She is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and has received Life Membership and Scroll from The National Council of Negro Women. A member of PEN, she was honored for her life and career by The History Makers. She has received the keys to more than two dozen cities. A scientist who admires her work even named a new species of bat he discovered for her!The author of some 30 books for both adults and children, Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Politics, Poetry, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Amiri Baraka | Visionary Poet

November 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Amiri Baraka [32:16m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

It was a huge honor to speak with Amiri Baraka on the show. More about him from Wikipedia:

Baraka’s writings have generated controversy over the years, particularly his use of often-violent imagery directed towards (at various times) women, gay people, white people, and Jews. Critics of his work have alternately described such usage as ranging from being vernacular expressions of Black oppression to outright examples of racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism that they perceive in his work.[9][10][11] The following is a typical example cited, from a 1965 essay:

Most American white men are trained to be fags. For this reason it is no wonder their faces are weak and blank. … The average ofay [white person] thinks of the black man as potentially raping every white lady in sight. Which is true, in the sense that the black man should want to rob the white man of everything he has. But for most whites the guilt of the robbery is the guilt of rape. That is, they know in their deepest hearts that they should be robbed, and the white woman understands that only in the rape sequence is she likely to get cleanly, viciously popped.[12]

Amiri Baraka was New Jersey’s Poet Laureate at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He wrote a poem titled “Somebody Blew Up America”[13] about the event. The poem was controversial and highly critical of racism in America, and includes angry depictions of public figures such as Trent Lott, Clarence Thomas, and Condoleezza Rice. The poem also contains lines claiming Israel’s involvement in the World Trade Center attacks:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away? […] Who know why Five Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion

Baraka has said that he believed Israelis (and President George W. Bush) were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, citing what he described as information that had been reported in the American and Israeli press and on Jordanian television. He denies that the poem is anti-Semitic, and points to its accusation, which is directed against Israelis, rather than Jews as a people.[14][15] The Anti-Defamation League was amongst the critics who denounced the poem as anti-Semitic.[16], though Baraka and his defenders to defined his position as Anti-Zionism.

After this poem’s publication, Governor Jim McGreevey tried to remove Baraka from the post, only to discover that there was no legal way to do so. In 2003, after legislation was passed allowing him to do so, McGreevey abolished the NJ Poet Laureate title. In response to legal action filed by Baraka, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that state officials were immune from such suits, and in November 2007 the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear an appeal of the case.[17]

Baraka was named the poet laureate of the Newark Public Schools in December 2002.[18]

  • Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, poems, 1961
  • Blues People: Negro Music in White America, 1963
  • Dutchman and The Slave, drama, 1964
  • The System of Dante’s Hell, novel, 1965
  • Home: Social Essays, 1965
  • Tales, 1967
  • Black Magic, poems, 1969
  • Four Black Revolutionary Plays, 1969
  • It’s Nation Time, poems, 1970
  • Raise Race Rays Raize: Essays Since 1965, 1971
  • Hard Facts, poems, 1975
  • The Motion of History and Other Plays, 1978
  • Poetry for the Advanced, 1979
  • reggae or not!, 1981
  • Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974-1979, 1984
  • The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, 1984
  • The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues, 1987
  • Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones, 1995
  • Wise, Why’s Y’s, essays, 1995
  • Funk Lore: New Poems, 1996.
  • Somebody Blew Up America, 2001
  • Tales of the Out & the Gone, 2006

Posted by admin | Filed Under Politics, Poetry, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Galway Kinnell | Legendary Poet

October 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Galway Kinnell [33:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

What an honor to speak to legendary poet Galway Kinnell. Listen to him read two poems during the interview, and talk about his political views, his early years, and much more!About Galway Kinnell (from poets.org):

Galway Kinnell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on February 1, 1927. In his youth, he was drawn to both the musicality and hermetic wisdom of poets like Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. In 1948, he graduated from Princeton University, where he was classmates withW. S. Merwin. However, while Merwin studied with the critic R. P. Blackmur andJohn Berryman, Kinnell felt what he called in one interview “a certain scorn that there could be a course in writing poetry.” He later received his Master’s degree from the University of Rochester.

After serving in the United States Navy, he spent several years of his life traveling, including extensive tours of Europe and the Middle East, especially Iran and France. His first book of poems, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960, followed byFlower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964).

Upon his return to the United States, Kinnell joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and spent much of the 1960s involved in the Civil Rights Movement. His many experiences with social activism during this time, including an arrest while participating in a workplace integration in Louisiana, found their way into his collectionBody Rags (1968), and especially The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War.

Kinnell has published several more volumes of poetry, including Strong Is Your Hold (Houghton Mifflin, 2006); A New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990); Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; and Mortal Acts, Mortal Words (1980).

He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Prose works by Kinnell include collection of interviews, Walking Down the Stairs (1978), a novel, Black Light (1966), and children’s book, How the Alligator Missed Breakfast (1982).

About his work, Liz Rosenberg wrote in the Boston Globe: “Kinnell is a poet of the rarest ability, the kind who comes once or twice in a generation, who can flesh out music, raise the spirits and break the heart.”

Kinnell’s honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He has served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges and universities, including the University of California at Irvine, Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence, and Brandeis, and divides his time between Vermont and New York City, where he was the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of Creative Writing at New York University.

He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. 

Posted by admin | Filed Under Poetry, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

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