Black bell

The astute second collection from Rollins (Library of Small Catastrophes) delivers an unsettling encounter with American history and its reverberations into the present. Taking its title from the practice of enslavers attaching iron bells on rods to enslaved people to prevent them from escaping, the collection plumbs the relationship between sound, Blackness, and performance as possible avenues for ongoing resistance and liberation. The first entry, "A Bell is a Messenger of Time," suggests that the unjust entanglements of the past continue to haunt: "Barnacle bells. Irremovable attachments. Even when I ghost you, you still hear me." Rollins draws on more recent technologies to call to mind current issues surrounding racial bias, as in the poem "Phillis Wheatley Takes a Turing Test," which includes instructions for one of its two voices to be read "via a computer-generated or synthetic voice," as though AI gets to determine whether the foundational poet of the African American tradition is, in fact, human. Formally inventive poems incorporate diagrams, such as "Hymn of Inscape," inspired by Harriet Jacobs's and Henry "Box" Brown's unconventional and harrowing escapes from slavery: "A nation is an open secret/ ...To escape is to sing." It adds up to an unflinching and incisive compilation. (Apr.)

In the early-mid 1800s, enslaved people in the United States were often kept from running away by an infernal contraption of bells and iron horns attached to their necks and rising high above their heads. This device sits at the heart of this ambitious new work from poet/librarian Rollins (Library of Small Catastrophes), which reveals how sound and silence, violence and denial of personhood are woven into the Black experience, "Black bell is the space inside her / Hollowed. Hallowed. Halo," still reverberating today. As if to emphasize the experience of bearing the bells, several poems in this collection suggest physicality by offering instruction for performance; others illustrate creating boxes to show how to build not just a poem but a self, referencing Gerard Manley Hopkins's notion of inscape, the inner architecture of things and people. "We build our temples for tomorrow," said Langston Hughes, quoted in this volume, and throughout there is a sense of connecting (including via sex, as in "Your hand on my music maker") and going forward, even into space. Yet history still weighs ("Which way is home from death?"), as does the need for resistance ("Inside the wall of her cheek / was a sliver of violence / only she could trust"). VERDICT Complex and intriguing, this work will attract readers of cutting-edge poetry.

Black Bell Sound can give things a color,  the way eyes can smile.  To give yourself back to yourself,    you must increasingly fold inward  at the etched creases of your palms.  To turn black is to join the fold.   To turn back is to face the music  of the shotgun's open mouth.   We watch to see   how black bell's holding up.  By a thread? A string? A hook? A rope?  She sleeps a sleep of the sleepless,  a bell's body is never at rest.  from " For Henry 'Box' Brown, from Alison "Inbox" @ Brown" When Henry "Box" Brown arrived  in Philadelphia, and his box was opened,  he recited a psalm.  I waited patiently on the Lord,  and He heard my prayer.  Brown then began to sing  It is unclear whether Henry "Box" Brown's  singing was the start, end, or continuation of  a performance.  When Alison "Inbox" @ Brown arrived  in Providence, she was expected  to read her poems aloud.  Alison "Inbox" @ Brown stands before the Lord  as a survivor rather than a victim of domestic abuse.  A survivor is free. A victim is placed in a box.  It is unclear whether Alison "Inbox" @ Brown's  reading is the start, end, or continuation of  a performance.  Henry "Box" Brown would go on to become  a magician, showman, and renown performer,  often reciting the psalm he sang when he  first emerged from the box.  Alison "Inbox" @ Brown would go on to become  obsessed with bringing Kobo Abe's novel  The Box Man to life, an IRL translation.  In the spring of 1850, Henry "Box" Brown's  "Mirror of Slavery" (a panorama)  opened in Boston and was exhibited  through the summer.  [172 years later]  In the spring of 2022, Alison "Inbox" @ Brown first performed  "Mirror of Freedom" (a poem) in Providence.  It is playing until...  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot Because I could not stop for Death,  I creep. In a subjunctive mood,  I travel back to the future, to the  place where I hold out for a sound.  At present--I ride shotgun,  Eliot at the wheel of an Impala  with suicide doors. Immortality  kicks the back of my seat.  She rolls down her window  even though the air is on.  We pause at Sonia's house,  the one on the end with lions.  All the ghosts in her garden  have heart, the bees extinct,  and the Negroes high yellow in  pollen. 'Twas mercy brought  me from pagan poppies.  'Twas love that drove me  towards this climax of laden  light. I look away from  the pistil of war's flowered head.  There were birds where questions  should have been, in this world  with no use for gender.  T.S. rolls slow with a gangsta lean.  He points ahead, calls my hometown  the waste land. He kisses my head  and dust names me its daughter.  Excerpted from Black Bell by Alison C. Rollins All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.