jock librarian

Of the four poetry books that I've been juggling this week, two are absolute and utter standouts: Galway Kinnell's Strong is Your Hold and Patricia Smith's Teahouse of the Almighty. Kinnell's eleventh book of poems is loving, melancholic and meditative. Smith's work is empathetic, smoldering and muscular.

"It Had the Beat Inevitable" is an affirmation. Smith pays homage to her influences:

It's all right what Bobby Womack taught us, what Chaka growled,
O.K. to flaunt the hard stone double dutch planted in our calves.

Forgive Smokey for sending us off to search for that white horse
and the half-white boy riding it. Go on, shove that peppermint stick

down the center of that sour pickle, dine on a sandwich of Wonder
and souse, take your stand in that black woman assembly line to

scrape the scream from chitlins. It's all right that Mama caught the
'hound up from Alabama, that Daddy rode up from Arkansas and

you're the only souvenir they got. We brown girls, first generation
brick, sparkling in Dacron and pink sweat socks, we went the only

way we could. Our weather vane, whirling in Chicago wind, was
the rusted iron torso of a stout black woman. We vanished for a while.

Gwen Brooks hissed Follow. We had no choice.