Ledger of Crossroads (review)

The "crossroads" to which James Brasfield refers in the title of his new collection, Ledger of Crossroads, welds sociopolitical junctions to critical turning points in individual lives. For example, "Letter from Germany," a persona poem in the voice of an American GI, speaks of the condition of soldiers everywhere: "There is nothing normal left. / The smell of guns massed in this valley / Hangs bitter in the air. / A town burns across the ridge." Layered with figurative language that gathers importance through pattern and repetition, the poems take up the legacy of institutional and systemic oppression. Speakers examine wartime shifts in national borders and the historical consequences of violence, undercutting the concept of a stable personal/political identity.

Using strategic syntax in the opening poem, "Identities," Brasfield locates the "reading" of a place as a site of difference and commonality.

In Kyiv, citizens decipher the surfaceas at the Pole, an Eskimoreads snow, as in Baltimore a manmight read the Sun in that southern city . . .

Cross-cultural empathy and a searing urgency, unfamiliar in much American poetry, reflect Brasfield's two Fulbright awards to Ukraine. For example, in "Renovation," set in contemporary Lutsk (northwestern Ukraine), an old woman sweeps a courtyard, where a demolition fire burns.

For centuries she's swept the leaveswith her broom of birch twigs and straw.From the court of Macbeth, menin heavy coats and fedorasstoke the fire with Styrofoam.

Here, the visual scene contains a pan-European picture of domesticity paired with characters representing the timeless struggle for a throne. A magpie "rests in the scaffolding / of branches," one of many bird motifs Brasfield employs to link disparate places and people.

. . . the magpie has flown six hundred yearsfrom Lubart's castle, from the seigeof dilapidation at Lutsk, from apple tree, from pig squealand cockcrow, all those desertedfactories by the river Styr.

Past and present comingle in image and sentence structure. Prepositional phrases yield precise nouns ("castle," "siege," "dilapidation," "tree," "squeal," "cockcrow," "factories") and establish a transnational, fictional lineage for contemporary Lutsk and the speaker who, at the close of the poem, "can almost / hear the Scythians dancing." Placing himself among ancient, fierce warriors who lived in a vast area that included what is now Ukraine, the speaker acknowledges his own unstable national identity and his connection to others.

A Georgia native, Brasfield confronts the legacy of American slavery in an original way: he juxtaposes the American South and eastern Europe. "Heart of Dixie" showcases Brasfield's many prosodic gifts.

Every day came, the char of silence and beauty,brick foundations of what was here, dirt roadscut through pines, rivers and the dust of the dead,bone silt and a song, bird cries, the freight train

through the county, crops and cows, chickens wanderinga patch of yard, wind through sun-silvered leaves,the clay baked hard, undulating in August, farmersin a field, weathered wooden sheds, isolated.

Every day came, a hound in the yard.Call it circumstances, the way we thought thingshad to be, rough and polished stones on a creek bank.We had no choice but to believe, sincere and alone

and the black faces, their eyes loweredin our homes on Broad Street. We did not sympathize.It was almost normal. Call it circumstance,the alarm and nature of sidelong glances,

the way we thought things had to be,God's will, our history and we wanted it quiet.It was always dark. You get used to anything, we saidwith eyes lowered. It was almost perfect here,

mist and wildflowers, the charred crossin a field. It was almost normal, a quiet streamand a gravel road. Every day came.It was dark and no one could see.

The speaker produces a dense, penetrating music with anaphora ("Every day came") and single-word ("yard," "dark," "quiet") repetitions. Variations on short, staccato phrases and sentences—"It was almost normal" and "Call it circumstances"—evoke a brutally constricting environment. Varying a word's form, the poet unifies his artful construction.

For example...