Posts Tagged ‘Evie Shockley’

by Evie Shockley
Carolina Wren Press 2007
Reviewed by Mike McDonough

At Ease

Evie Shockley’s a half-red sea is a smart, eclectic collection.  She knows her literary history, as the book is framed by epigraphs by Phillis Wheatley and Lucille Clifton. A high point is reached when, in her wonderfully descriptive title, “wheatley and hemmings have drinks in the halls of the ancestors.”  The collection inhabits this massive sweep of history in multiple ways without being abstract or overly academic. You can get your American Studies groove on. It’s why you went to college in the first place.

The strengths and weaknesses of this approach are perhaps exemplified when the lyrics to Steely Dan’s “Peg” make an unexpected appearance near the end of a signature poem “a thousand words,” printed on a gatefold page literally framed by repetitions of the word torture. The poem works up a haunting and obsessive rhythm, while the increasing self-consciousness of the punning content both hints at and closes off some serious depth.  Then again, it would take the resources of Robert Hayden to write a long poem about torture at the highest, classical level of intensity. Shockley can reach that pitch but doesn’t insist on it, which is to say that she is willing to experiment with a variety of forms, voices and tones to make that history come to life. Which is also to say that she is willing to risk writing poems that might appear weaker in comparison to her best ones. Happily, this doesn’t happen often. Old slave narratives, film noir, the overcooked language of advertising, and the Anita Hill hearings are all used to good effect, because (forgive me) her emotional compass remains steady.

Her poems flash authentic grit: “Poems are bullshit unless they are trees a century old, sentries lining the streets of Senegal.” Or: “The spit of fifty foreign tongues / visa’d by Christ.”  Lyrics from Parliament and the Temptations mark key refrains, keeping us grounded through poems that might otherwise come across as exercises. “double bop for Ntozake Sange” is a member of the stalwart, usually boring genre of poems about poetry readings, but this one vividly evokes the simple physicality of being there rather than some vague, strained abstract of content or mood. 

you kept us waiting, sprawled across
the rigid network of seats like so much
spanish moss, a fungus of patience.

why you wanna treat me so bad

arriving, you staggered, no, tightroped
your way to the mic. your hollow apology
rang with the purity of a spoon tapped
against plastic. reading, your words poured
like oatmeal, clumped and milky, over your
red lips. what could (be) wrong (with) you?

At its most appealing, Shockley’s work delights in the permutations of words, but is more emotionally resonant, risky and revealing than Haryette Mulen’s canny but overly consistent punning in Sleeping With the Dictionary. “the ballad of anita hill” confronts this modern tragedy with all the vitriolic ambivalence it deserves:

bring your family (nuclear only). make
    sure they dress middle class and hug
you affectionately. be strong, or fake
    it, but in a womanly way. don’t be smug

or shy or prudish or loose, when testifying
    that he said “pussy” or “penis” on the job:
push the words out, as if they were defying
    gravity, then let them fly. weep. don’t sob.
exude celibacy—heterosexual style.
    sit up straight. smile. don’t smile.

The lack of capitals here reminds me of Cummings’ best satire in “next to god of course america, i” hitting perhaps harder because of the use of a specific, painful incident that is still available to memory even as we keep trying to forget it. The expected snideness is complicated by how the standard American script is thrown in our face, and brought into stark relief by Hill’s obvious integrity in the face of editorial onslaught. Both Hill’s and America’s character are revealed.

In contrast to the uncompromising “ballad of anita hill,” some of her more traditionally proper and reverential poems seem weaker, and not all of her experiments with layout and format are spot-on.  But these moments are easily outweighed by the stunning variety of mood and content she displays, in a time when the internal consistency of a collection builds barriers to interdisciplinary thought, as if each author has to decide that she is writing either short, pseudorealistic novels, artful unassailable abstractions, or practical political weapons. Shockley negotiates the musical, historical, artful, political, personal, abstract, concrete and experimental dimensions of language with an ease that remains firmly grounded in a historical consciousness, a faith in that elusive something that makes us American. Perhaps because it evokes that faith,  a half-red sea is not consistently cutting edge. If Shockley can be accused of being academic, she doesn’t neglect the sheer variety of words, the picture or the music, while insisting on readability throughout.  At its best, a half red sea is a richly polyphonic riff, evoking a wide variety of emotions and characters, the kind of longed-for, half-remembered, half dreamed, all-too-real America Ralph Ellison would recognize and appreciate.

*

Tags: 8 stars, Evie Shockley, Mike McDonough
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