Good News: This collection is a clear-eyed chronicle which shows us how issues of power, violence, race and gender are played out on a daily basis.
Good News: Patricia Smith is not only a poet, she is a witness:….never forget….never become indifferent (read the poems about the murder of Emmet Till through the eyes of his mother…powerful) Somer poems are rooted in lived experience (youth, growing up, hurricane Katrina, reports of black males and their abuse of women).
Good News: Strong point: Writing…her humour, her lip and nerve. She never sugarcoats. (Poem: “Biting Back” about being a mother of teen-age son: “When squeezed I spit money”).
Good News: Strong point: defining the world she sees and letting the rest of us in on what things look like now.
Good News: Strong point: a journalist’s eye for detail…and a novelist’s ear for language.
Personal: Strong point: Reading very slowly…some poems take my breath away…and some were too upsetting to finish reading (black fathers killing their toddler as revenge on their x-wife). I’ll try to read these 2-3 poems later when I feel mentally prepared for them. The book took me a month to read…a few poems at a time. Some books are like people….they turn up in your life when you need them. This is my book. While the many in the USA are trying to fathom what is going on this month in Minneapolis Minnesota, I found THE line in Ms. Smith’s poem “Scars Poetica” (pg 332) that sums up all the tweets, podcasts, headlines, Inta videos: “We kill without blinking, loathe without thought.”
by Patricia Smith (no photo)
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