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| The Nucleus (link to Amazon) |
This will be a strange review because this is a strange,
wonderful, multi-genre book.
I cannot quote from it, because then it will look like it is
filled with passable poetry. In fact, it is filled with merely passable poetry
when taken in isolation—but it would be a mistake to read it that way. And it can only be taken
whole. I will not allow it to be distorted by taking out of context some of her
verses so that they can be measured according to the the standard protocol of
“good” poetry.
For one, this isn’t good poetry: rather it is profound verse. While
my sense is that Warren put this book together the only way she knew how, I
don’t think it is a mistake that the verse is centered, the way of greeting cards
rather than traditional poetry. This stuff is
greeting card verse turned to important art.
If Billie Holiday could turn a saccharine pop song into high
art, why can’t Warren turn verse into art?
This book represents a character struggling to turn trauma into dignity, and succeeding in so many ways.
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What’s more, this isn’t just a book of verse. This is a multi-genre memoir—verse, sermon, prose reflection, literary discussion, and letters to some of Warren’s five children. She calls the book,
explicitly and early on, “nonfiction.”
A life emerges. A single mother of five children. A free
spirit who ran with her children to Texas from Minnesota. A survivor of
domestic abuse.
In one verse she calls herself “Omega”—a fascinating brag
piece in the tradition of Bo Diddley/Muddy Waters' “I’m a Man,” Koko Taylor’s
answer, “I’m a Woman,” and a number of early Queen Latifah numbers—and with all
such bragging, it is ecstatic celebration tinged with sadness.
Why the sadness? Because we talk about what we don’t have.
If you will allow me a detour: as almost any linguistic theorist will tell you,
language emerges from problems. For instance, we don’t talk about our coffee mug when it is holding our beverage and allowing us to drink. But, as soon
as the handle cracks, a problem emerges, and we talk about it. Language comes
from the sore spots.
Back to “Omega.” The brag not only celebrates how great the
braggart feels about herself, it also, in a simultaneous, subterranean message, communicates
the hurt that necessitates the bragging in the first place. Why would a wholly
secure person brag? They would have no reason.
In Warren’s case trauma seems to underlie this bragging.
This book represents a character struggling to turn trauma into diginity, and
succeeding in so many ways—as Pearll and as Omega. But Tinitha keeps turning
up: insecure, questioning, suspicious, deeply hurt.
Trauma creates psychic scars as deep and unerasable as any
physical ones: Tinitha will never go away. “Omega” is a personal psyche job
gone public, an attempt to keep Tinitha at bay so Pearll can soar.
And soar she does. So often. But she cannot triumph. None of
us can.
There is always Tinitha.
Buy this remarkable, American book, one where the artist
lays it on the line the only way she knows how, with no heed nor care for genre
distinctions, nor what she should or shouldn’t do. This is an individual, an
American, going her own distinctive way, for all of us.
Rosario Winters is an
independent scholar living in Seattle, Washington.
