Finishing Black Crow Dress

Oh! I finished Roxane Beth Johnson's Black Crow Dress this morning (I try to start my day with poetry), and there are such beautiful images and lines, I must share them.

In "Clea, Living and Dying," a voice that we've heard throughout the book suddenly shares that she's had many lives, rather than just one. Describing her different lives, she tell us: "Once, a saint: my soul clung to God the way an egg grips its separate parts." I've had a lot of experience with eggs (having had laying chickens and ducks) but I don't think I'll ever look at an egg the same way again.

I didn't mention yesterday that some poems are in the voices of the slaveowning people, rather than the enslaved people themselves. In "Caroline Confronts Tobias Finch," we learn that Tobias, a slaveowner who loved, in his way (which is to say in a brutal, dominating, and demeaning way: is that love?), Caroline, ultimately leaves her to die in the snow. Beyond death, she won't forgive him, which denies both of them their rest. So there's a wonderful turnaround in this poem. Caroline says, "You follow me now, hollering through every season, saying Caroline, let me go." Oh! So smart. Beyond death, the ironic end--no, the eternity--he deserves! Who was it who said that art has something to do with justice? (The quote I'm thinking of but can't quite recall is Yeats, I think? Also, I think, many others have yoked the two together.)

The final poem, "Goodbye to My Favorite Ghost, Clea," is in the poet's voice. Listen to this: "Now, put your hands in the loam, pull damp moss from the earth's scalp--a pillow for your grave." The earth's scalp! Oh! I love images of the earth as a person, as a body. And using scalp is an inventive and different way of doing that because scalp as a word and a thing is not particularly beautiful--it's a harsh word with a history that echoes, at least for me. So perfect. So evocative.

The ending comes full circle, with the ghosts taking their leave and the poet saying goodbye to the ghosts who at the beginning were coming to haunt her. What a wonderful book of poems!

Checking in with Poetry and Roxane Beth Johnson's Black Crow Dress

I have been wanting to blog, mostly, I think, because I love another poet's blog and long to do something like it. I can't speak for her purposes, but for me, I'd like to make sure I check in with poetry regularly. While I used to write a little before I got down to work (editing), lately the feeling that I need to rush to get working asap and I don't have time to write or read or work on my own stuff has been reigning. (I know why this panic has set in, but knowing is no help. Deep breaths, deep breaths.) And I've noticed that as I've loosened the grip on my poetry goals (as I feel I've had to for the same reason), I feel some sense of grief. So today, when I'm totally sick with a cold, I thought I'd show up on the blog and tell a little story.

I live in a place that doesn't value poetry much. The bigger town east of here decorates their downtown street with paper leaves with poems on them arranged by a dedicated teacher or two in one of the schools during National Poetry Month. The city I used to work in west of here recently had a writer's conference with one workshop on poetry. (I went! It was super-interesting! I'm grateful!) I live about an hour and a half from a wonderful artistic city, but I have a full life here, and it's hard to get there. (Even, long ago, when I lived in Sacramento and went to Mills College in Oakland for my MFA, I still found it hard to drive the 1-1/2 hours one way to events. I missed a Li-Young Lee reading once that way. I missed a poetry reading of a friend of mine earlier this week, but I was sick--my whole family has been sick in the last week--so it is what it is.) Between these two more urban areas with their limited appreciation of poetry, I live in an area where people ask if we're into hunting or fishing or boating because that is what people do here. (No, we live here to get excited every time the sandhill crane comes to visit our pond, stalking the summer-loud frogs, and to marvel and wonder when it takes off, flapping its huge wings over the trees.)

All this makes it even more wonderful when I go to some of the little one-room libraries in the small towns and find wonderful books. My favorite library has few poetry books, mostly just classics. But I needed to go to another library one bright and wonderful Saturday to pick up an editing resource (the doorstop AMA style guide, which I was so grateful to find!) and found Roxane Beth Johnson's wonderful Black Crow Dress, a collection I'd consider a project book focusing on specific enslaved ancestors and their lives and deaths. The poems are wonderful, and I'd quote from them but poetry copyright online is very sticky (I've read), and I don't want to get in trouble. (Does a blog post count as a review, which obviously quotes? Oh, I'm too sick to think that one through.) Many of the poems are strictly in the voices of these enslaved (and some subsequently freed) people, but one thing I really love in this book is that she also speaks as herself haunted by these ancestor ghosts with her home full up with these ghosts and their voices and, sometimes, mischief. (I've often felt haunted by ghosts--for example, if I dream about someone, it's as if something of their essence is with me the whole next day. So I love that Johnson's literalized this in her poems in such rich and beautiful ways.Wow, her images!!!) The ghosts in her house give me a lot to think about as I work very slowly on my own project book that is partly about my dead grandparents, their actions, and our ancestors.

Must go. I'm needed.