Poetry

poetry 207 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Poetry JULIA REIBETANZ We begin this year=s review of poetry with George Elliott Clarke=s Execution Poems, winner of the Governor-General=s Award for Poetry. Execution Poems revolves around Clarke=s cousins, George and Rufus Hamilton, who were hanged for murder in July 1949. The initial poem in the volume sets the tone: Le nègre negated, meagre, c=est moi: A whiskey-coloured provincial, uncouth Mouth spitting lies, vomit-lyrics, musty, Masticated scripture. Her Majesty=s Nasty, Nofaskoshan Negro, I mean To go out shining instead of tarnished, To take apart poetry like a heart. My black face must preface murder for you. (>Negation=) This book is about murder B >They were hanged back-to-back in York County Gaol= B but it is also about the poet=s attempt to lay his ghosts B >My bastard phantasms, my dastard fictions= B to an honourable rest (>George & Rue: Pure, Virtuous Killers=). The poetry boils with rage and sadness B the >fire taste= of injustice (>Original Pain=). George and Rue tell their stories, from childhood on, with a terse eloquence and a clear commitment to truth: Geo: Ma fainted scrubbin some white house=s blackened crap-box. She got a heart stoppage and drooped, kaput. Rue: Years, our only real emotion was hunger. Our thin bellies had to take rain for bread. (>Childhood I=) They dismember and reconstruct their identities with courage and wit: >My destiny was always murder and to be murdered. / Ain=t we such stuff as humus is made of? / Let me drink black rum B ambidextrously= (>Identity II=). Their language is proud if >fractured=: >I really speak Coloured, but with a Three Mile Plains accent. / See, I can=t speak Lucasville and my New Road=s kinda weak. / Ma English be a desert that don=t bloom less watered by rum= (>Trial I=). But no matter how much of George and Rue is revealed by their narrative, something of them, and of the poet himself, remains proudly obscure: >What I am / Cannot be dreamt / By anyone / Imperfect as you= (>Identity I). 208 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Throughout the volume, Clarke revels in word play, especially on the polarity of black and white, of darkness and light. He celebrates the energy of a >dark rum= speech (>Childhood II=), against which the >alabaster, marble English= of the court proceedings condemns itself as dead (>Malignant English=). The condemned men condemn the culture of death that has enslaved them: Rue: Hanging Gardens of Babylon Nope, hanging niggers in Fredericton! We=ll hang like Christ hanged. Geo: The laws preach Christ, but teach crucifixion. Folks glance through us like we=re albino ghosts. (>Famous Last=) And the poet laments: I would like very much to sing B in a new life, a new world, some April song B >A slight dusting of snow, the indigo dawn hovers B and we sweeten in our love,= yes, something like that, but blood must expunge, sponge up, blood. (>Trial II=) His song is the >medium= against which >history darkens= (>Childhood II=). In the foreword to Blue, also published this year, Clarke describes his own voice as >US-torched= B >black, profane, surly, American=: >The Great Republic=s fiery liberty set me blazing. An incendiary dérèglement charred my brain black. ... So, I craved to draft lyrics that would pour out B Pentecostal fire B pell mell, scorching, bright, loud: a poetics of arson.= Like Execution Poems, the poems in Blue are written in the belief that >A pen burns paper= (>Burning Poems=). Their colour is blue: Blue is a noose strangling the vulnerable sky Blue is a generic nigger, a genre nigger, an angry nigger ... Blue is Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues; Lush Dreams, Blue Exile; and Blue Fatal, foolhardy poetry. (>Blue Elegies=) The poems in this volume are wide-ranging B blending >classical and romantic allusions with shantytown dialects and imagery,= as Phil Hall suggests, into celebrations of >the ethnic culture of the country.= As such, poetry 209 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter...