No Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dahs in Randall Horton’s The Definition of Place

Alicia Ostriker once wrote, “a good place poem should be written in a poet’s own style. It should come out of something subjectively important, beautiful, painful, and happy in the poet’s relation to that place.”¹ She added, “. . . a good place poem makes the place alive and real (even if just in the background).” Randall Horton is a master of conjuring up the real. His aptly titled debut collection, The Definition of Place, recreates the world of his southern black ancestors with passion, pathos, humor, and love.

In a singular style, Horton breathes life into poetry, painting intimate portraits of family history (much as Alex Haley did in Roots). These poetic motion pictures detail both the harshness of southern black life in the early twentieth century, and the wellspring of courage inherent to black survival. It is a moving, unadulterated snapshot of one black Alabama family’s tenacity that testifies to the indomitable spirit of all African people.

The work is in a very real sense a poem-play of survival stories in six sections. The first section begins with a “backstory” articulated by an all-knowing narrator, who recounts distant family events of dramatic significance and cathartic import. We soon learn that the author is not afraid to examine his own ancestral detritus. In fact, he masterfully draws us into an affinity for his family with gripping illustrations of both their heroism and their demons. We witness courage when a drunken white man threatens Horton’s relatives on their journey home one Sunday after church:

Buckshots were the handshake given when King, inebriated from honeycomb moonshine, disrupted a peaceful buggy ride, thought he could square dance right up to old colored Wiley Fennel and his brother Percy’s wagon and invade family space with whiteness.

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Though readers are given a clear view into the pluck that underpins the Horton family, the author is quick to make the point that his ancestors were not superhuman. In the isolation of an Alabama jail (where characters Wiley and Percy Fennel are taken after their confrontation with King), readers observe fiends of fear and doubt. From Wiley Fennel, we hear:

Every minute I’m in his skin I face the disposition of hateful men who would chew me up—spit me raw. I want to tell Daddy God done forgot.

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Section two “Elvie and Rosetta,” is arguably the meat and marrow section in The Definition of Place. In it, Horton introduces the audience to the main characters in his theatrical production (his grandfather and grandmother respectively). These ancestors, rural black people from 1910 South, speak of their profound love for each other and of their dreams. Their monologues are framed primarily in prose poems (although Horton employs lyric poetry as well). Indeed, prose poetry that incorporates haiku is featured in this. Vivid imagery is tied to the rich and singular language of the South. In the poem, “Elvie Horton Stumbles into Rosetta Merrill, Age 26, 1929,” some of this language is aired as Elvie speaks of his love for Rosetta saying, “. . . One look at/those coffee eyes and I was hooked like a three pound/crappie grazing river bottom . . .” (13) The author takes readers back in time to view a love story between Elvie Horton and Rosetta Merrill in a fashion that makes the Horton assembly representative of the universal family of man. In the poem, “Rosetta Merrill: We are Everyperson,” we hear:

. . . My family is a strong spirit . . . At night, when coal whitens in a potbelly stove, and the impossible is our only hope, I close my eyes and feel my feet pulled from red clay and know my footprints will be here long after we have sung these everyperson blues.

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All people, to some extent, hope their lives will be significant. Rosetta Merrill expresses these universal aspirations here. In an equally captivating manner such dreams are eloquently echoed by her counterpart. In a later poem, “Elvie: Time to Think About It,” Elvie states, “. . . I...