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maybeams's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
never have i ever read a book where every SINGLE poem absolutely shatters what i think a poem can look like. EVERY page reinvents and improves upon itself. we are blessed with this work.
mixedreader's review
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
In a moment of upheaval, this book is earth to sink into. And somehow, it is also air, that gusty wind that when you close your eyes you are sure for a moment you’re flying. Feet rooted, lungs wide, I’m calling for you to read this collection.
In an epigraph to the title poem, Aurielle Marie uses this quote from Madame Luisa Teish: “It is important, Sisters, that you understand what gumbo ya ya means…A cacophony of sound, like a swarm of bees, is moving in my direction.” Words buzz and tumble across each page as Aurielle Marie flexes across different poetic forms—from sonnets and ghazals to the layering of text that resembles a swarm. The energy lifts off the page and floats around you. I’m telling you sometimes I had to sit on the ground as I read this book to feel my body rooted because I was following the direction of the letters.
In “Gumbo Ya Ya,” she writes:
“My mother came here to cash/
This speech in for fresh vegetables. I was only allotted/
My time. I was instructed to say thank you. Gratitude is a tricky math…./I recognize that my work is all gristle, thank you America/ for stealing the meat. What’s the pronunciation of my name?”
In “psalm in which I demand a new name for my kin,” she asserts, “not sister, but salvation of noise.” Salvation like preservation, deliverance through and from and within a gxrlhood (author’s use of x) bound by societies pressures but boundless in voice, imagination, possibility and resonance. Aurielle Marie is here to split you open, coax out the inner child, inner joys and fears, let them run wild. By doing so, she asks for a reckoning, of what has been asked of those who share these identities, these faiths, who live within this country and hope for beyond.
I’m shaken and steadied. Grateful.
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