the dialectics of solitude



could a more pretentious blog entry title possibly be devised?  hailz no


but is as good a phrase as any to capture some of what's going on in Amiri Baraka's early 60s but timely poem "Hegel":

. . . 

       I am trying to understand
       the nightmare of economics

. . . 

                        Either I am wrong
                        or he is wrong. All right
                        I am wrong, but give me someone
                        to talk to.



The poem in its entirety is reproduced on the typically excellent Autodidact Project site, here.

TiR went searching for the poem after passing mention of it in the also excellent talk by professor Jeremy Glick at this fine event.


or rather, TiR went searching for it months after the talk, after reviewing TiR's well nigh illegible notes, buried, than excavated, then puzzled over, then deciphered


Glick discusses the poem, Baraka's poetics, and scholarship on A.B., in the context of what he critiques as "pragmatist longing," in his 2010 boundary 2 article here (.pdf).