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A review by steveatwaywords
Olio by Tyehimba Jess
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Meta-Poetry, history, and thematic challenges to culture appropriation, artistic integrity, and the dehumanizing and perverse commodification of all things black--Jess's ambitious and sincere work nonetheless traces the very human stories of black artists from the 1850s to the 1930s, finding spaces for their voices in the local jubilees of houses of worship, in their oaths and song, in the intersections of their art and its utterance.
And still I have not captured the breadth of this large work, its pages (literally sometimes) unfolding to reveal not only the limitations of the poetic form, but the limitations of the paper itself. Read carefully to find disparate and antagonistic testimonies not only woven together but turning upon themselves. Jess's forms represent the performative contortions of black survival and rhetoric, the conditions of violence and the turning of that--at times--into a parody upon the parodies of minstrelsy or marketing.
Each of the poems is evocative enough, speaking the reality of its suffering, its spirit, its grounded understanding of circumstance. But the real power of this collection is in the juxtaposition and intersection of these words, the silences and spaces which turn upon themselves.
Yes, read it for the little-known tale of the tragic Scott Joplin or the dozens of others whose lives are (re)discovered in these pages, but also for the challenges offered to white and black creators and consumers, resolutions still too elusive.
And still I have not captured the breadth of this large work, its pages (literally sometimes) unfolding to reveal not only the limitations of the poetic form, but the limitations of the paper itself. Read carefully to find disparate and antagonistic testimonies not only woven together but turning upon themselves. Jess's forms represent the performative contortions of black survival and rhetoric, the conditions of violence and the turning of that--at times--into a parody upon the parodies of minstrelsy or marketing.
Each of the poems is evocative enough, speaking the reality of its suffering, its spirit, its grounded understanding of circumstance. But the real power of this collection is in the juxtaposition and intersection of these words, the silences and spaces which turn upon themselves.
Yes, read it for the little-known tale of the tragic Scott Joplin or the dozens of others whose lives are (re)discovered in these pages, but also for the challenges offered to white and black creators and consumers, resolutions still too elusive.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Cultural appropriation, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Slavery, Hate crime, Death, and Grief
Minor: Sexual content