You're The Most Beautiful Thing That
Happened*
Arisa White
2016
Augury Books (NYC)
96 pp
Paper, $16
ISBN:
9780988735576
Reviewed
by Clara B. Jones
More than 20 years ago, the artist,
Andrea Fraser, suggested that works by women don't have staying power
because women are generally marginalized or incorporated—remaining
invisible. Reviewing artistic work by women, then, may be seen as a
recovery project to highlight women's practices that may, otherwise,
be overlooked or ignored. In a patriarchy, females are objects, men,
subjects, and men speak for women, creating a particularly
challenging landscape for women expressing themselves via the
spoken or written word (language). One of the pleasures attendant to
reviewing books of poetry written by young, female, women of color
(e.g., C.M. Burroughs, Francine J. Harris) is reading work with
“interpretive power” (Helen Vendler) worthy of being taken
seriously by other poets—men and women alike—and worthy of
persistence over the long haul. I have been impressed with the degree
to which many early-career writers of color, and, many young poets in
general, are successfully expanding the strictures of Formalism by
integrating form, language, and function.
I read Arisa White's, You're The
Most Beautiful Thing That Happened (hereafter, YTMBTTH),
after reading an essay on feminism and postmodernism by Craig Owens
who quoted Fredric Jameson—“...it suddenly became clear that
'D.H. Lawrence' was not an absolute after all [a male spokesman about
women], not the final achieved figuration of the truth of the world,
but only one art-language among others, only one shelf of works in a
whole dizzying library.” Young female writers of color, and other
female writers, especially, feminists, have taken their place in the
“dizzying library” of non-patriarchal forms and, like Harryette
Mullen before them, have taken their place among postmodern poets
disrupting the status quo by writing, as Owens put it, in
opposition to “Western man's self-appointed mission of transforming
the entire planet in his own image.” Contrary to most male writers,
most female writers, especially feminist authors, have boldly chosen
to address comfort; personal narratives and personal relationships;
egalitarian associations rather than ones based on power
differentials; emotions and feelings; language as authentic
communication rather than abstraction and symbolism; and, a holistic
and an organic view of the world.
White's book exhibits the foregoing
characteristics, as well as, being an ambitious and intimate map of
one woman's experiences as a female citizen of the world. Based on an
e-mail interview, White stated, “I
identify as a feminist poet in the same ways I identify as a black,
queer/lesbian poet—these are identities I stand in and write from
and out of. These are social locations that help me examine our
political and cultural institutions and systems of thought. They are
lenses and sites for feeling and knowledge. In many ways, all these
things work together to help me nuance the world around me, give
language to particular experiences. I am feminist because I care
about the political parity of women/females, and I believe this
sexist oppression is the root of all oppression.” In YTMBTTH,
White addresses themes both subjectively and universally, including,
childhood, loss, love, and chaos in lyric-like poems demonstrating a
respect for form, function, and, especially, language (“There are
little words,/that can fit in little places,/if you say them small
enough.”; “She is pretty and perfect in sleep before language
must be assigned—“; “When your friends are around, your hands
language/near her to confirm she's close:...”).
White's
poems are decidedly not derivative; however, their cryptic use of
language and meaning remind me of Meghan Sterling's autobiographical
and understated, yet strong, poems about female issues relevant to
anyone concerned with a humanistic interpretation of life and living.
White's poems invite the reader into her interior space without being
didactic or literal (“Men, when they do, cross their legs in the
way of academics./Never in the way of churchwomen who keep the
secret/covered—there's nothing to be implored, explored,
discovered./In the way of academics, the whole body thinks....”).
White's lyricism often takes the form of homages, usually, to lovers
(“Sounds the body/makes to keep quiet/while I take/your camisole
down:/purple. Our sable bodies/an inappropriate math/in one stall.”).
The author deftly addresses intense issues (HIV, sex, self-concept)
without losing control of her emotions or language or focus or
material. At the same time, her poetics and style communicate the
limitations of language for exposing the full range of experience
(Post-modernism), indicated, in part, by her frequent use of nonsense
words, repetition (“...There's no going back from raw. New
story/you, mezzo and wood bending. My love, you're the/darling
dang—true-dat, true-dat, true—dat-dat-dat.”), as well as, avant
garde conformations
(see, especially, and, notably, the poem, “Four Square,” on page
71).
Other
themes that struck me as I read YTMBTTH
were references to West Indian/Caribbean culture (see poem, “Auntie,”
on page 17), and British (colonial?) habits (“I prefer my tea with
sugar/when I talk to you. You make/each minute an island where
we,/crowned and carpeted by green,/sip Dragon Well from our palms.”).
And, then, there is the matter of race—usually present but rarely
explicit (however, see the poems, “Who Invited The Monkey To Omen's
Party,” on page 16, and “Drag Up...dedicated
to the white people who were asked to raise their hands if they would
choose to be black,”
on page 18). Via
e-mail, White shared, after reading one of my essays, “The
essay has me thinking about what it would mean for me to write
directly about race, how does it feel creatively within? Immediately,
I thinkfeel [sic]
about being in an 'interracial' marriage, which is more so an
intersectional state of being (race, gender, sexuality, class) than a
singular way of identifying. I think the pressure is how to write
from these intersections/interstices. . . using polarities to make a
third thing, to create a lens for seeing what the opposites map out.
If black and white are said to be my points of reference, what is the
gray communicating in relationship to the blue-black?”
The
“intersectional” is postmodern, indeed. Since the 1970s,
approximately, identity has become a fluid, personal narrative. My
essay, referred to in the previous paragraph, argued that many
early-career poets of color, male and female, LGBTQI and
hetero-normative, are defining race-gender-class on their own terms
rather than writing about race explicitly, directly, or literally.
Many of these poets are writing, following Emily Dickinson, “slant.”
By her account, some of White's major influences are Saul Williams,
Carl Hancock Rux, Erykah Badu, Toni Morrison, Patricia Smith, Rebecca
Seiferle, Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Hart Crane, Medbh McGuckian,
Harryette Mullen, Tyehimba Jess, and Ross Gay—artists who challenge
Modernism's meta-narratives, crafting individual voices and impulses
derived from their personal experiences, interpretations, and
perceptions. White's next project is in this tradition, “a craft
talk about my queer imaginary [that will] unpack the queer imaginary
that informs my work, examining the way my lesbian aunt and her
friends languaged [sic]
themselves in the world and how that became a model for how I create
a poem.” My advice to the reader of this review is—Do not wait
for her future projects in order to savor Arisa White's compelling
work. Each of the poems in You're
The Most Beautiful Thing That Happened
is necessary, deserving a wide audience, and, with this collection,
the author has made a valuable contribution to the literary
community.
*Originally
published in The Curly Mind, 2017
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