50books_poc | (1.) "Dread" by Ai; (2) "Song of Farewell" by Jane Okot p'Bitek

This is my first post here. Thought I'd raise my head and do more than just lurk in the shadows.

So, for my first post, two books of poetry. I find poetry very difficult to discuss like this, even though I read a great deal and enjoy it a lot. I'll give a shot, though, in case there are any other poetry lovers out there looking for something new.

Dread is Ai's seventh collection of poetry. Ai describes herself as half Japanese, Choctaw-Chickasee, Black, Irish, Southern Cheyenne, and Comanche. She grew up in Tucson, Arizona.

Dread is a fascinating collection. Several of the poems deal with 9/11, but even as a New Yorker, I did not feel particularly moved by those poems. I'm not sure why. Even though the poems are told with the intimacy of first-person, I get the impression she approaches them with great distance. The narratives are dark, though, rich. Wavering between different fictions, from one who has lost a brother to one who has lied to rescue workers about her dead sister (who didn't die at the WTC at all).

Another set deals with her racial identity, and it careens all over, from one narrator to another, from one generation to another, from one gender to another. Perhaps the most affecting of these poems is written not about her own life but rather about the Tulsa Race Riots of May 31, 1921. "The Greenwood Cycle" includes 4 poems.

The first, "Conjure," is written from the perspective of the daughter of a woman killed in those riots. "It ain't Christian, is it," you whisper, Ai writes, "to be murdered like this and just forgot?" The poem conjures the haunting image of an old woman rocking in time to a clock stopped at the moment of her mother's death, of a life devoted to remembing the loss of another's.

The second, "Sanctuary," is written from the perspective of another girl. Though her race is not explicitly mentioned, she is surely dark enough to be pursued by the Klan members racing about on horseback. She finds herself under a house with a mother dog and her pups. The pups' eyes have not yet even opened, but the narrator's have.

The third, "The Rescue," is told from the perspective of a half-Black, half-Native American who seems a young Black boy running from the Klansmen, who thinks, My daddy was a Negro too / Should I do something 'cause halfa me / could also swing from that tree? The narrator does something, distracts the pursuer long enough for the boy to excape. The boy reappears later, starving, and the narrator feeds him. The poem meditates, like many of Ai's, on the burden of being multiracial. "I ain't too black for you?" the boy asks. The narrator replies, "I am too," I said. The boy replies, "No, you ain't," he answered, / "but you'll do."

The fourth, "The Sheriff's Explanation," takes the perspective of the white sheriff who deputizes even Klansmen in an attempt to keep the peace. He defends himself, saying, I could not live with the disgrace / of allowing Negroes to get away / with rape, murder and worse. / If we didn't stop them now, I thought, / we'd have to later. The old woman who used to be his cook and nurse or maybe nanny is killed but the sherrif didn't say a word when that old boy / hit her body with a rock / and said, "Another one dead." Afterwards, we avoided talking about it / the way people do when they're ashamed, but we weren't ashamed, no, not that. / We were justified.

The final group of poems fits neither of these categories. One, "Gender/Bender," concerns the love of a man for a cross-dressing Dutch prostitute. "The Psychic Detective" series reads like a strange episode of CSI and is actually fantastic and dark and terribly interesting.

Haunting and beautiful, even if I found it difficult to connect with all her work. Ai's a well-known poet and I'm not sure how I missed her before, but I'll be sure to pick up more of her collections.

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Song of Farewell is a series of poems by Jane Okot p'Bitek. I have struggled to find much information about Jane herself. Her father, Okot p'Bitek, was a Ugandan poet much lauded for writing poetry about Ugandan life in English, making it accessible to Anglophone Africans and those outside of Africa. He taught around the world, was exiled from Uganda during the rule of Idi Amin, and returned in 1982.

His daughter, Jane, apparently remains in Uganda (though I cannot confirm this). Song of Farewell is written in her father's typical style, which has been named the East African Song School, which is based on traditional song style and phrasing.

Song of Farewell is the story of a young woman who leaves school in order to marry the man who has gotten her pregnant. Six months later, he leaves for war and never returns, and she is left to raise her son alone, reviled by local women for being promiscuous with other women's husbands.

This series is gutwrenching and painful. The narrator's voice is clear, bright, and honest. Her pain shimmers over every word, whether she is pleading with her husband not to leave or trying to explain to her son where her father disappeared to.

She struggles with her decision to stay in her village instead of leaving for the city. Whoever lied to you / That to be civilized / You had to be ashamed Of what made you, you? the narrator asks. That you turn your back / To it / And pretend / That you are not a member / And call it primitive? She rejects that there is anything wrong with remaining in her village. Have you not heard / That it is the roots / That hold the plant / Firmly to the ground?

She struggles with war and with the meaning of peace, which has cost her the love and support of her husband. Because my eye is out / Why should he have his? / If I am I / Why should you be you? / Is this / The price of peace? the narrator asks mournfully. What does this peace / Look like? / Is it some chronic disease / For which we search in vain / For medicine? She is disgusted by war mongers who create and promote conflicts from the safety of their homes. When I think / Of my beloved husband / Who may be rotting / Under some bush / In the battlefield, / I realise, she says, The bitter fruits / That are reaped / When the seeds of war / Are sown. Profoundly painful to read, and yet familiar, the moan of every family of a fallen soldier.