It ain't exactly Robert Frost

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?
Those lines, believe it or not, pass for poetry these days. And not just poetry banged out by any old hack. It's the work of New Jersey's poet laureate, Amiri Baraka.
It's also an excellent example of why many newspapers, this one among them, shy away from publishing poetry. Because, frankly, there's an awful lot of drek out there masquerading as poetry, and very few editors have the time, training or talent to sift through it.
Incidentally, the last time we used drek in this column, a thoughtful caller informed us that she was surprised to see the word in a daily newspaper. She remembered it from her youth as Germanic or Yiddish slang for excrement. We assured her that we had in mind only the Webster's NewWorld Dictionary definition of "trash or rubbish." But regarding Baraka's poem, the Old World definition might better apply.
Who is this guy?
Until last week, we doubt that 100 people outside of New Jersey knew that the Garden State had a poet laureate, and we doubt that more than 100 people inside the state could have named him.
But his rambling 1,100 word poem, "Somebody Blew Up America," has put him in the middle of a political controversy, primarily because it repeats an Arab propaganda claim that Israel knew about the atack on the trade center before it happened. Further, somehow the word was quietly spread among thousands of Jews who then stayed home from work, sending their non-Jewish friends to their deaths.
Baraka has a right to write any poetry that he wants. Even bad poetry. Stupid poetry. Poetry that makes the reader think only about what a shallow, gullible bigot the writer must be.
But why should the state of New Jersey or any state glorify such a man?
There are calls to remove Baraka as poet laureate, a largely ceremonial position that runs for two years and is funded with a $10,000 grant. That would only make him a literary martyr, which is far better than he deserves.
Baraka, who will be 68 Monday, has spent most of his life as a niche poet, going through avant-garde, black nationalist and Third World Marxist phases. Let him return to the relative obscurity from which he came when his term as poet laureate expires.
And let New Jersey and other states think twice before conferring an honorary title on literary riffraff.