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A review by nick_jenkins
Finna: Poems by Nate Marshall
5.0
Poetry collections are not generally page-turners—in some ways, speeding through a volume of verse may generally be a sign of either tedium or superficiality. But my experience with Finna was one of ravenous enjoyment: I read it all today, and while I couldn't read it in one sitting, I wanted to get back to it as soon as I had to lay it down. As I neared the end of one poem my excitement about what awaited me in the next made it difficult to focus on the last few lines (a real peril, as some of Marshall's most charged and memorable lines lie at the close).
Although not confessional in nature, there is an intimacy to Marshall's poems achieved by both self-reflection and a cherishing of the familiar. Many of the poems both feature and are principally about code-switching, but the oscillation between an academic English and a Black vernacular does not really invoke, much less get tangled up in, questions of authenticity: Marshall fully owns his poems' language, is in total control of their diction, whatever register or argot he's using. What is to me the standout poem, the eponymous "FINNA" coming near the end, is one of the more profound meditations on the way idioms embed themselves into our lives as windows on the world that I have ever encountered in a poem. I really cannot be enthusiastic enough about this book.
Although not confessional in nature, there is an intimacy to Marshall's poems achieved by both self-reflection and a cherishing of the familiar. Many of the poems both feature and are principally about code-switching, but the oscillation between an academic English and a Black vernacular does not really invoke, much less get tangled up in, questions of authenticity: Marshall fully owns his poems' language, is in total control of their diction, whatever register or argot he's using. What is to me the standout poem, the eponymous "FINNA" coming near the end, is one of the more profound meditations on the way idioms embed themselves into our lives as windows on the world that I have ever encountered in a poem. I really cannot be enthusiastic enough about this book.