Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) was born LeRoi Jones in Newark, New Jersey, and became one of the most forceful and controversial poets in American literary history. His early work, collected in Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note (Totem Press, 1961), showed the influence of the Beat Generation and Black Mountain poets. His 1964 play Dutchman won an Obie Award and signaled a sharp political turn toward Black Nationalism. He later co-founded the Black Arts Movement and produced influential poetry collections including Black Magic (1969). He served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2002 to 2004 and received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008.