Jones, LeRoi

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note....

New York, NY, USA: Totem/Corinth Books, 1961. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. “Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way / The ground opens up and envelops me / Each time I go out to walk the dog. / Or the broad edged silly music the wind / Makes when I run for a bus… / Things have come to that. / And now, each night I count the stars, / And each night I get the same number. / And when they will not come to be counted, / I count the holes they leave. / Nobody sings anymore. / And then last night, I tiptoed up / To my daughter’s room and heard her / Talking to someone, and when I opened / The door, There was no one there… / Only she on her knees, peeking into / Her own clasped hands.”--LeRoi Jones, “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note,” pg. 5. LeRoi Jones (1934-2014), a/k/a Amiri Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. Throughout most of his career his method in poetry, drama, fiction, and essays was confrontational, calculated to shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans. For decades, Baraka was one of the most prominent voices in the world of American literature. Baraka’s own political stance changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods: as a member of the avant-garde during the 1950s, Baraka—writing as Leroi Jones—was associated with Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969); in the ‘60s, he moved to Harlem and became a Black Nationalist; in the ‘70s, he was involved in third-world liberation movements and identified as a Marxist-Leninist. Mired by as much controversy as praise, Jones’ career spans several novels, dozens of collections of poetry, a handful of literary movements, and a smattering of political essays as well as music criticism. Jones’ oeuvre is vast as one might expect, however, there are a number of works that stand out when thinking of his literary corpus including: the poetry collections, New Music, New Poetry (1980) & Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1995); the plays Dutchman (1964), and A Black Mass (1966); the novels The System of Dante’s Hell and Tales of the Out & Gone (2006); and the non-fiction works Blues People (1963) and Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974-1979 (1984), among many other works across genres. Offered today, however, is not only among the rarest in his oeuvre, but indeed the primordial foundation of Jones’ career, that is of course the debut collection of poetry Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note… (1961). Heavily influenced, and in fact, inspired by the avant-garde Jones was immersed in at the time, ala Ginsberg, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note… is a work that is not only experimental, but undeniably suffused with a Beat sensibility. Concerned, primarily, with class, race, and the co-mingling of the Black experience within a society driven by capitalism and white supremacy, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note… is as politically driven as it is by experimentation and the surreal. As stated in the introduction to newer editions by William J. Harris (b. 1942), he says the following: “Preface is not just another New American Poetry book, it is also a Black one. Race as such is the explicit subject of only three poems in the collection: “Hymn for Lanie Poo,” “The New Sheriff,” and “Notes for a Speech.” Lanie Poo is a nickname for his sister, and the poem is a satirical one, lambasting both the Black middle class (“generation of ficticious / Ofays”) and the Black bohemian who doesn’t have time to go “uptown for Bar B Cue.” In “The New Sheriff” Baraka reveals his instinctive distaste for white women, admitting, “There is something / in me so cruel, so / silent. It hesitates / to sit on the grass / with the young white / virgins . . .” Yet it seems the ground gained toward ethnic identity in “The Bridge” has been lost in the last poem in the collection, “Notes for a Speech.” The poem begins, “African blues / does not know me.” This is like Countee Cullen’s “Heritage” in reverse; that is, Africa is not the source of his heritage. The poem ends, “My color / is not theirs. Lighter, white man / talk . . . Africa / is a foreign place. You are / as any other sad man here / american.” That is, at this point he denies his African heritage and moreover, his African American difference. This is a surprising and disturbing end to the book. But the story does not end here. Baraka continues to struggle with the hegemony of the white tradition. His struggle darkens in his second 1964 poetry volume, The Dead Lecturer, where he is totally aliened from his self and lives among his enemies and in the 1965 experimental novel The System of Dante’s Hell, where he fights to reject the influence of his “white friends,” the white avant-garde, in particular—Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Allen Ginsberg. He felt trapped by them. He does not escape their apparent influence before the 1969 collection Black Magic. How do you evaluate a first book? Some critics want to know what it forecasts: how does it show in embryo the genius to come? I am less interested in what this volume leads to than with what it is. Even Baraka is hard on his early work; he observes in the invaluable Conversations with Amiri Baraka, edited by Charlie Reilly, it “should be looked at as an attempt of a young writer trying to be a poet. I was borrowing from other writers whom I was influenced by at the time.” And, more self-critically he says in 1965 in Home, “Having read all of white’s books, I wanted to be an authority on them. Having been taught that art was ‘what white men did,’ I almost became one, to have a go at it.”” An increasingly rare volume by one of the great writers of the 20th century! From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), poet, editor, and professor in the University of Michigan Department of English Language and Literature. Chapbook in stapled wrappers. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page. Chapbook in relatively very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, slight creasing/tearing at spine, moderate rusting at staples, and minor discoloration due to age-toning and minor spotting to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #8683]

Price: $100.00