The Good Ol' Days!

This week in poetry class we read the poem, “In Memory of Radio”, by Amiri Baraka. His style is more beat poet than any other. The way he separates himself from the different people throughout history tells the reader he is taking these memories of the radio and giving his own opinion towards them. I love the title of this poem because it sets the scene and image in the readers mind. In this poem Baraka mentions several different people who may have affected his life. In a few years will be writing a poem similar to this about music, politics, or television? This poem ran around and around in my head, only because the thought of the world changing came to mind.

Poetry has no limit, it has not rules, poets express their feelings and I wish to do the same about my poems. Baraka does not use a rhythm of rhyming, which threw me off track a little bit. He tells us facts about how he feels about that specific person and than demonstrates the thoughts in his mind. He tells us kind of a story about what he did when listening to the radio, the people he heard and remembered, and the events in which was occurring. But, it was very interesting how he uses these people in the poem to explain his events and thoughts. He connects other radio listeners who are just like him. Each line throughout Baraka’s poem, “In Memory of Radio”, is hard to read for me at first because there is not a distinct flow of rhyming. But, I went beyond that and tried to understand what Baraka’s words truly meant in his perspective. After reading the poem again, I began to understand that all these people in whom he was mentioning was his childhood. These were the names he remembered listening to on the radio, and the people who played a role in his life.

 

It was very interesting how he uses these people in the poem to explain his events and thoughts. Baraka certainly gave me the feeling that I was welcomed into his life by the descriptions he gave to us about the different people throughout his poem. If you haven’t already read Baraka, and I hope that you get the same feelings and connections in which I did. Baraka is “the man” of writing poetry about the beat movement. The beat movement inspired young teens to succeed in their lives; this is inspire not only my thoughts about the beat movement, but it will also help me and motivate me to write poetry.