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A review by shuly
Movement in Black by Pat Parker
5.0
Pat Parker is quintessential reading for anyone interested in any kind of radical or social justice poetry but her influence is often obscured by more popular authors who show up more recently in black lesbian literature. I'm certainly not arguing that anyone should stop reading Audre Lorde or Alice Walker, just that there's a lineage that stretches past them!
Parker's poetry has a strong narrative element to it, much of it autobiographical, and uses her narrative skills to offer the experiences of the poet herself at the intersections of many different identities along with poignant insight into the lives of black lesbians in the 70s. She focus herself neatly on the real lived experiences of the folks in her community and speaks truth to power on every page.
She got her start reading her poetry publicly and it shows. Her best poems are the ones where her voice shines through and you feel her presenting her work to you across the decades--her weakest poems are the ones that are heart-wrenching in recordings but lose an element of their authenticity when memorialized on paper. Other reviewers have admonished her work as simple, but I don't think simplicity is a flaw. Western poetry is fixated on overly-complex flowery screeds but Parker celebrates simplicity, relishes in being straight-forward.
Finally, to really get your mind on Pat Parker as a poet, listen to her read aloud. Below she recites three different poems from Movement in Black (my personal three favorites, the ones that I feel best exemplify her and this collection):
"Woman Slaughter"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1A6BP1kIzQ
"Where will you be?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-fP71SQCAE
"Don't let the fascists speak"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuoZXUHqiCM&t=1s
Movement in Black offers precious advice on bravery and resilience, and feels just as necessary now nearly 40 years later as it did when it was first published in 1978.
Parker's poetry has a strong narrative element to it, much of it autobiographical, and uses her narrative skills to offer the experiences of the poet herself at the intersections of many different identities along with poignant insight into the lives of black lesbians in the 70s. She focus herself neatly on the real lived experiences of the folks in her community and speaks truth to power on every page.
She got her start reading her poetry publicly and it shows. Her best poems are the ones where her voice shines through and you feel her presenting her work to you across the decades--her weakest poems are the ones that are heart-wrenching in recordings but lose an element of their authenticity when memorialized on paper. Other reviewers have admonished her work as simple, but I don't think simplicity is a flaw. Western poetry is fixated on overly-complex flowery screeds but Parker celebrates simplicity, relishes in being straight-forward.
Finally, to really get your mind on Pat Parker as a poet, listen to her read aloud. Below she recites three different poems from Movement in Black (my personal three favorites, the ones that I feel best exemplify her and this collection):
"Woman Slaughter"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1A6BP1kIzQ
"Where will you be?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-fP71SQCAE
"Don't let the fascists speak"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuoZXUHqiCM&t=1s
Movement in Black offers precious advice on bravery and resilience, and feels just as necessary now nearly 40 years later as it did when it was first published in 1978.