By
Afaa Michael Weaver
University
of Pittsburgh Press
Pittsburgh,
PA
ISBN
13: 978-0-8229-6458-2
112
Pages
$15.95
Review
by Dennis Daly
How
does a man endure a lifetime of mind-numbing physical work, then go
on to write a body of profound, ethereal poetry unlike anything else
being written today? Ask poet Afaa Weaver. He’s not the first
poet/writer that has broken out of a hard knocks life. But his
measured, sometimes soaring verse, distilled from years of drudgery,
offers up an unusual intoxication worthy of the most engaging, indeed
the best, of modern writing.
Using
Chinese mystical metaphors Afaa Weaver, in his new book Spirit
Boxing, revisits his coming-of-age experiences and blue collar
workplaces he and others labored in with keen insight and a racial
sensitivity both adamant and gentle.
Appropriately
enough the collection opens with a poem, John Henry Sleeping in the
Grass, that summons a vision of the African American folk hero, John
Henry. Charged with hammering holes into rock for explosives, Henry
met his end in a mythic contest against a steam-powered hammer drill.
Henry, according to the story, won the contest before his heart gave
out. Weaver’s piece highlights a dream-like potential and
determination in the sleeping figure of the symbolic Henry. Consider
these telling lines,
… black
steel
his
destiny, John is motion at rest,
tides
of moon and waves in still waters,
suns
igniting hearts of molten iron,
a
hardened conviction, rose petals in rain.
Sleep
is a dream, the real world a poundage,
work
a sentence for being his mama’s son,
the
hammer in his crib…
Working
in an ice house not only negated seasons and froze passions, but it
molded the human will with its metaphoric inclinations. Weaver in a
poem entitled Houses of Ice, 1969 meditates on operation, on how
harsh manufacturing abnormalities devolve into their natural elements
and even human sentiment. Notice the bit of generational rivalry and
the pride toughness dispenses to the protagonist son. The poet says,
… In
the freezer
it
was a winter I had to bundle up to fight,
in
an insulated coat my father used to wear
working
in the steel mill where I thought
things
must have been kinder because
this
frozen hell was against all nature,
each
block the same except for the chips
the
ice hook made when I grabbed them
to
feed the scoring machine. Things need
a
process, a method for becoming real,
even
ice, which is wise enough to return
to
water, to unmask itself from the stamp
of
human hands, to become mist, steam,
dried
spots where it spreads itself as light
as
air or nothing, not enough of it for miles
to
become three hundred pounds again,
each
pound the weight it takes to kiss,
or
to fall in love, hoping love will last.
Not
for nothing is Spirit Boxing, the title poem of this collection,
reprinted on the back cover of this book. The lines rivet one’s
attention with a vengeance. Set in a soap factory, the protagonist
seeks his internal spirit and intellectual life while fending off the
back-breaking labor of his allotted duties. The irony of providing
the soap for America is not without wit. Weaver even invokes John
Henry for a second, and very effective, appearance. Here’s the
heart of the piece,
… the
shift is young, my body
a
heavy meat on bones, conveyors not wired
for
compassion, trucks on deadlines, uncaring
pressure
of a nation waiting to be washed, made
clean,
me looking into the eye of something like
death,
and I look up, throwing fifty-pound boxes,
Jesus
now John Henry pounding visions of what
work
is, the wish for black life to crumble, snap
under
all it is given…
Throwing
bales of hay with one arm leads into a poem entitled When the Farms
Give Out. Weaver describes a promised land that has betrayed its
owners and which ultimately evicts them into an amoral urban world
where humans are commodities. The piece concludes contemplating a
dismal future,
… the
farms worn down to rusted weeders,
manure
spreaders, mules too high on themselves
to
keep a simple humility, and what do we know
when
we have to take to reaching for electric fans
as
clerks in stores that go way out to sell paper
shacks,
lard, and salt to folks living in the hills
chewing
on piles of dry corn. Call me Isaac,
trying
to ward off what’s coming to all of us,
the
day the end comes to these, the hot mills,
cement
plants, grain silos, docks, the places
we
left the land for when the land could not give
back
what we planted. We moved to cities,
the
broad hand of justice turning dirt into dust.
Weaver’s
poem Grabbing Lunch in the Morgue surprises in this collection with
its rude audacity and existential bent. A female morgue assistant
plays the protagonist perfectly, observing the peculiarities of the
morticians and each dead person’s kin. The poet sets up the piece
with earthy humor and indelicate description. Then the tone turns to
a philosophical lamentation against death and finally rage. Weaver
begins the tone transition this way,
The
families come just after the Coca-Cola made her burp,
opening
the door to the cabinet so they can see how naked
death
is, none of the things we accumulate beside us,
none
of the failures, the prizes, the big houses, no thing
in
itself, while whatever memories they had are somewhere
where
dreams go and die. When peering eyes of parents wet,
then
burst into the floods of sorrow, she stares at nothing,
the
bright glow of sunlight under the morning clouds, and
when
they are gone she presses the door closed, her hands
holding
each other, her arms in a bow like a hammer …
Yet
another sublime poetic collection from Afaa Weaver.
