Reviews

The Black Maria by Aracelis Girmay

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tonatyuh's review against another edition

5.0

I sorta don't have any words for this, but I will say that Girmay's poetry is one that I can see myself revisiting--especially this volume.

I underlined a lot, and felt a lot as well, but again with poetry I find myself unable to properly "review" or explore my thoughts without revisiting it at least one more time.

But yes, definitely recommend.

stasibabi's review against another edition

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fast-paced

3.5

gaybf's review against another edition

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5.0

listened to her read when i was in high school.... i love u aracelis girmay....
quotes/poems:

(from elelegy): About the flies the Luams say: The fly is bright & working. It carries the messages of hunger & the sentenves of the wound. It cannot carry the message without, itself, being touched. The fly whose hands & feet touch death, bring death to where it lands. Out of doors, it carries the history of the wound, disobeying the locks on doors & screens. The flies, they are the honest who know their history & take it everywhere.
(from prayer & letter to the dead) Today, just over a hundred years later,
hundreds & hundreds of these bodies stand

in museums, in books,
on shelves, the dark, wooden bodies

swollen with the rusted & silver scales of nails.
Grief & wounds on display, the black docent

(is he me?) explains: The coins we pay
to view them will not ever go back to the dead,

& will not go to the living.
to the sea (any)
In some of the stories, Abram Petrovich Gannibal had a sister named something like "Lahan." I will call her, here, Luam, which is a common Tigrinya name. Tigrinya is just one of the languages of present-day Eritrea. In Tigrinya "Luam" means "peaceful" or "restful." The Luam/Abram stories vary. IN some, she is said to have been taken captive alongside her brother but then to have died after being brutally raped (all rape is brutal) at sea. In one version of her story, she is said to have chased after the boat that took her brother. She leaps after him, & drowns. In another version, she is taken hostage on the boat but she gives into the sea & dies while attempting to escape, to swim away home. The story of Luam, in each of its versions, is the story of many, in Eritrea & outside of Eritrea, who have fled or attempted to flee, whether carried away by bandits, dreams, or, most common in the 21st century, by the consequences of a thoroughly devastating post-colonial legacy which often leaves its subjects with lack of other choices but to attempt to flee/leave into the diaspora.
(from luam in the sea, to the survivors)...Every now & then stopping
for your eyes to follow, into dark space, the brother
who would not last. The Galaxy does not blink for this sadness. Churns on.
Though you throw your faces down after, over
the relatives now little bones, & sand.
luam, --asmara (excerpt: No one loves the flies, their work,
their rearranging, marking us
with the light of other guests.

Religious world--

if there are angels, they are flies
who hover over our privacies,
kissing us with mouths
that have kissed
other wounds.) <--- GOD!!!!
Look! In other poems you are.

Making & delivering the tea,
fixing the bicycle, reading the map,
answering the phone! Turning
the bulb of light into its socket.
I cannot decide. Are the poems
brilliant for not letting you go?
to the sea (in its entirety):

great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference,
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our carnations,
yellow & pink, how they float
like bright sentences atop
your memory's dark hair.
(from on poetry & history --after Joy Harjo)
She said it was her job to put that grief in its place, or else someone else, some child or grown person would be out walking & just walk right into it, without knowing what it was they'd walked into, what they had, then, inherited in a way, what they were, then, carrying & feeling. The danger of that. The grief of that. & that was what she said about poetry & history. & that is all I remember from all of the things that were said that day.
(parts from The Black Maria):
Language is something like this. A hard studying of cells under a
microscope,
cells on their way to becoming other things: a person, a book, a moon.
If this is a poem about misseeing--Renisha McBride, Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd,
then these are also three of the names of the black maria.

Naming, however kind, is always an act of estrangement. (To put into language that which can't be
put.) & someone who does not love you cannot name you right, & even "moon" can't carry the moon.
Third Estrangement, In Memory Of Jonathan Ferrell
(cooley high, fifth estrangement, 1991) Please stay with me as I
replay the last touch. My face
buried in her hair & neck. How
I am quiet, & let her say
"This is the best thing"
though I disbelieve it, even now.
She was my mother, after all,
& president of nothing.
(Neil deGrasse Tyson q 2007) I wanted to be something that was outside of the paradigms of expectation of the people in power.
And I look behind me and say, Well, where are the others who might have been this? And they're not there. And I wonder, What is the [thing] along the tracks that happened to survive and others did not? Simply because of the forces that presented it. At every turn. At every turn.

(aracelis) Maybe he will be the boy who studies stars.
Maybe he will be (say it)
from The Black Maria:
IV.
What verbs will I use
to describe the living of my beloveds?

Beloveds, if I love,
what language will I
love you in If I see
what language will I use to see

& if I love & if I see
you Then strike lines across
the terrorful verbs, write:

"love," "study," "make," "disturb."
VII.
Body of sight. Body of
breaths. Body of trying.

Beloved, to
day you eat,
today you bathe, today
you laugh

Today you walk,
today you read,
today you paint, my love,

Today you study stars,
today you write,
today you climb the stairs,

Today you run,
today you see,
today you talk,

You cut the basil
You sweep the floor

& as you chore, touch
the ankles & hairs of your befores
who look up from their work
in the field or at the chisel
to tell you in their ways: You Live!
(from VIII.)
Beloveds, making your ways

to & away from us, always, across the centuries,
inside the vastness of the galaxy, how improbable it is that this iteration

of you or you or me might come to be at all---Body of fear,
Body of laughing--&even last a second. This fact should make us fall all

to our knees with awe,
the beauty of it against these odds,

the stacks & stacks of near misses
& slimmest chances that birthed one ancestor into the next & next.

Profound, unspeakable cruelty who counters this, who does not see.

& so to tenderness I add my action.
(mother of Jonathan Jackson Jr., visiting her brother in law's, George Jackson's, appeals in prison) During George's numerous trial appearances for the Soledad Brother's case, Mom would lift me above the crowd so he could see me. Consistently, we would receive a letter a few days later. For a single mother with son, alone and in the middle of both controversy and not a little unwarranted trouble with the authorities, those messages of strength were no doubt instrumental in helping her carry on. No matter how oppressive his situation became, George always had time to lend his spirit to the people he cared for.

wmmcmanlypants's review against another edition

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4.0

I think the best book of poetry I’ve read this year. The sounds, the images, the movements between them, and the history rolled into it all.

nick_jenkins's review against another edition

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4.0

The poem about Neil Degrasse Tyson is, in my opinion, the standout of the book.

scrow1022's review against another edition

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5.0

Loved this collection of poems, the rhythm of her language, the images, the ideas. Each poem was lovely, and deep, and they all came together to build something amazing. I'm looking forward to reading this again after a year or so.