Another world-famous poet-librarian has entered the eternal stacks underground.
The American poet and activist, Amiri Baraka (born LeRoy Jones, in Newark, NJ) was for a short time a base librarian for the US Air Force. He ran into trouble when he began to stock books that were deemed pro-Soviet, or supportive of Marxist principles, so it seems he was removed from that position.
(From NYTimes OBit): To stave off loneliness and misery, he read widely and deeply, stocking the library on his base in Puerto Rico with books — philosophy, literary fiction, left-wing history — the likes of which it had almost certainly never seen.
After three years, he was dishonorably discharged: Some of his reading material had made the Air Force suspect that he was a Communist. The irony, he later said, was that he did become a Communist, but not until long afterward. As he relayed in an interview:
So I joined the Air Force, which was a very, very stupid move. But the other hand, the dialectic of that that is very funny because, like I said, I became the night librarian down in Puerto Rico, which gave me the opportunity to order books from all over the world, order records from all over the world, and so complete my education, so to speak.
Also, several obituaries include that he remembered being forbidden to enter a segregated library when he was a boy.
Amiri Baraka was a book, not just in black and white, / but filled with living color and anger/ whom many people refused to read / while others fed on the poet's dreams. (WS)