by Patricia Smith
Coffee House Press 2008
Reviewed by Melinda Wilson
Measured Progress
Many authors of recent books of poetry have in some way made note of the Bush administration’s incompetence and buffoonery, of the mockery it has made of the United States’ government and ideals. Though Patricia Smith also views from all other relevant angles the deeply variegated horrors comprising Hurricane Katrina, her Blood Dazzler is certainly no exception.
Throughout this sometimes tender, sometimes agonizing account of Katrina’s ruinous and pernicious journey through New Orleans, Smith references the action, reaction, and inaction of both President Bush and his meaningless wife, First Lady Laura Bush. Each time I read such a passage I am left ashamed and stupefied at the disgrace and callousness (however unintentional) of this duo.
Perhaps, what is most staggering is the persistence of patriotism in many American citizens despite the embarrassment and anguish the Bush family has caused in the face of tragedy. Smith’s book opens with a poem titled “Prologue—And Then She Owns You,” in which her narrator discusses the intense relationship a citizen of New Orleans has with his or her home:
Weirdly in love, you rhumba her edges, drink
fuming concoctions, lick your lukewarm breakfast
directly from her crust. Go on admit it.
You are addicted…
Whatever disaster may strike, a resident of New Orleans is not likely to go quietly or without great regret. The dependency of the relationship between one and the home is too strong, hence our love of country in spite of George W. Bush. It is broken, and it is ugly, but it is ours. Ownership can make all the difference, as Smith points out in “Only Everything I Own”: “These are my cobwebs, my four walls, / my silverfish, my bold roaches.” Imperfections cannot taint the sense of possibility even when one has little control over his or her environment.
We certainly desire this control, but we are powerless. We often take home for granted, and Smith reflects on moments during which our powerlessness is realized and accepted. She states:
…I pull my bed
down from that wall, and I fall to my knees
next to it to question this shelter.
This is the first implication of God’s part in the disaster of Katrina, but Smith is careful not to blame. Even her commentary on President Bush is tempered and tacit. It seems we don’t have much choice when it comes to Bush. He doesn’t come right out and say what he means; he isn’t capable of that kind of clarity.
Smith first mentions Bush in “Gettin’ His Twang On.” A note that precedes the poem mentions that Bush had a small jam session of sorts with country singer Mark Willis on the afternoon of August 30, 2005, during which he played guitar while much of the country waited terrified and anxious to learn the extent of Katrina’s destruction. The awful insensitivity is reflected in Smith’s sarcastic and colloquial title and is compared to the extreme trepidation of folks in “the Ninth”: “Look like this country done left us for dead.”
While abandonment is dreadful, there are worse things. The criticisms of Bush’s measures during Katrina builds throughout Smith’s collection, and in “The President Flies Over” she notes Bush’s inability to comprehend or even sympathize with the people of New Orleans. The last line of the poem reads, “I understand that somewhere it has rained.” Certainly it is natural to reduce a disaster to its simplest form when there seems to be so few routes to true acceptance or understanding. Some people call on their faith to help them through, others their ignorance. Example, Laura Bush:
‘What I’m hearing is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so
overwhelmed by the hospitality…And so many of the people in the
arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this
[chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.’
This note opens “Thankful,” a more accurate account of the feelings of those sheltering in a Texas Hurricane Relief Center in Houston, praying to return to their homes. The poem ends, “Thank you for the ice eye, the impish giggle, / for reminding all our mothers to be damned.”
It’s therapeutic to talk about Bush these days; though he’s using his final 100 days to gut all that is good and right, there is an end in sight. Whether things are damaged beyond repair remains to be seen. Still, it’s importnat to bear in mind that the politics underlying Katrina can feel meaningless next to its physical horrors; in truth, this is where the bulk (and the best) of Smith’s work lies. Take this image of a woman trying to rescue her children from flood waters:
I have three children,
but only two arms. He falls
and barely splashes,
that’s how incredibly light
he is—was. How death whispers.
The awesome power of Hurricane Katrina is done justice here and elsewhere; her cast of characters is at turns willful, at turns devastated, always real. But despite Smith’s many successes in this book, it is not without its moments of excessive dramatization (the title, I think, is one of those moments). For instance, the series of poems that deal with “Luther B,” a dog left without a family or home with which to face Katrina, merely detract from Smith’s cause. She places human emotions on the dog which are better represented through the book’s many human characters. I think of George Orwell’s “A Hanging,” in which Orwell uses a dog to elicit sympathy from the reader for the man (criminal) that is on his way to the gallows. The human condition is best expressed in human faces, in human tears.
Smith’s poems are captivating and their heartrending subject matter adds to their allure. She is observant and precise; she captures a moment in our history that many will never forget, but also a moment that just as many will never begin to know. Blood Dazzler makes available to its readers a chilling time in America and crystallizes the nation’s fears and weaknesses. The final poem ends on a note of surrender, after many residents have returned to New Orleans, yet there is something hopeful about the book, something that says, “Progress is slow,” but maybe it’s on its way.
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