Yard show

Janice N. Harrington

Book - 2024

"Black history, cultural expression, and the natural world fuse in Janice N. Harrington's Yard Show to investigate how Black Americans have shaped a sense of belonging and place within the Midwestern United States. As seen through the documentation of objects found within yard shows, this collection of descriptive, lyrical, and experimental poems speaks to the Black American Imagination in all its multiplicity. Harrington's speaker is a chronicler of yesterdays, using the events of the past to center and advocate for a future that celebrates pleasure and self-fulfillment within Black communities"--

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1 copy ordered
Subjects
Genres
poetry
Poetry
Poésie
Published
Rochester, NY : BOA Editions, Ltd 2024.
Language
English
Main Author
Janice N. Harrington (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
107 pages ; 23 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9781960145314
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The erudite latest from Harrington (Primitive) celebrates the yard show--a personalized, and personally significant, display of objects in one's yard--as a microcosm for Black American expressions of place and belonging. Harrington's poems draw on a variety of sources--from roadside signs to the words of Martin Luther King Jr.--to create a delightful poetic mélange that showcases the ingenuity of Black Americans making space for themselves. The long title poem catalogs a specific yard show, moving fluidly between the voice of the speaker and a woman whose yard reflects her efforts to define her environment, incorporating "a red-capped gnome," "two ponds, three fountains," a hand-painted plastic cherub, and "a cast-iron kettle pinked with sedum," among other treasures. Harrington captures the (at times) mundane and oppressive Midwest: "I am heading to Springfield,/ through flatscapes, past variegated greens,/ the Second Amendment Burma-shaved on fence posts/ SHOOTING SPORTS/ ARE SAFE AND FUN/ THERE'S NO NEED/ TO FEAR A GUN/ while a voice on the radio predicts farm futures." Yet possibility remains in " woman's backyard and garden.// What she's made, with coins of sweat and constant work." This generous volume is a memorable testament to Black creativity. (Oct.)

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BURN The wind then, through seams of bluestem, or switchgrass swayed by a coyote's passing.   Where the fabric gapes, Barthes said, lies the sensual. A prairie cut   by winding seeps, or winds or shearing wings. Mare's tails, mackerels, cirrus,   distance dispersed as light. Under a buzzard's bank and spiral the prairie folds and unfolds.   Here between the stands of bluestem, I am interruption. I rake my fingers over culms and panicles.   Here seeds burr into my sleeves, spur each hem. In a prairie, I am chance. I am rupture. The wind--   thief, ruffian, quick-fingered sky--snatches a kink of my hair. The broken nap falls, wound round   like a prairie snake, a coil of barbed wire, a snare for the unwary. In the fall, volunteer naturalists   will wrench invading roots and scour grassy densities with fire. Wick, knot, gnarl, my kindled hair   will flare, burn, soften into ash, ash that will settle, sieve through soil, compost for roots to suck   and worms to cast out, out into the loess that raises redtop, turkeyfoot, sideoats grama,   and all the darkened progenies of grass that reach and strive and shape dissent from light. WIND SHEAR Under the magnolia, a winter-starved hare stills and pretends it is not there, and wanting less of fearfulness I pretend that I do not see my camouflage, the wild promises in my gaze, and step carefully by. Morning, bitter morning-- lack and awful patience wait at every compass point. Mourning, mournful, the prairie seals wind-scored stems with snow. Here inside a stalk of goldenrod a gall wasp will ride hard winter out. Here between my ribs, wasps of lonely, wasps of not yet, not yet wait and ride hard winter out. Such a slow season, laggard and mean. I can't explain the cardinals I've seen of late, but the crows' black fists, the way they bully eave and air, stab the morning with the sharpest awe , I understand it now. I see the reason and agree. A SHINING LURE Beside the back porch a crow hangs a string of meat from the magnolia's limb. Poor garter snake, poor ribbon, no longer container for the reptilian. But still your scales shine, still they school--that we might (couldn't we? shouldn't we?) by shining lure or by the clemency of our body's brief flare deny, fend off, or pierce that coming dark. Excerpted from Yard Show by Janice N. Harrington 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.