Ode to The Caribbean Writer
Nostalgia thrums my breast
Determined, I set upon a quest.
Cracking the spine of a place well known
Islands where I’ve flourished and grown.
Jamaica, Guyana, Haiti, Antigua, places of chiseled green beauty—
The Caribbean—this encompassing place has captured my heart, irrefutably.
To discover the sweet blend of voices both young and old
I invite you to shed the coat of winter’s cold.
Without a backward glance at your frigid mainland
Enter the sweet, sticky fragrance of the islands.
These ambrosial pages will entice
Language rich and redolent, yet still concise
Its poetry amorphous, experimental—lacking shape if you may
But nevertheless serious and most definitely not lacking gay.
Dive into a Jamaica by Alexander where
‘glittering droplets of rain’ can never compare
Struggle through thickets dense and skies gray
Where soils crumble to mark the stories of each man’s day.
To name some favorites, not so hard
For they’ve hammered long and deserve regard.
Oh how they’ve impressed
Themselves upon my chest—
Who draw emotions deep within
Decadence elsewhere embedded
That most certainly leaves one haunted
Like Menes, most worthy of belonging to the Caribbean canon
With ‘Dawn light after the squall sparkles like sugar along guava horizons.’
Oh the poetry is luscious but the ones I love above all
Shout the vernacular like silvery sheets of a Caribbean rainfall.
The journal is all too neatly arranged
And needs to give and take, a bit of an exchange
Instead of everything altogether bunched
Mix ‘em, blend ‘em, in a way that’ll deliver the greatest punch
For the poems begin to meld
Whereas verse-story-verse would’ve excelled.
A necessity, I think, for all sections
Is to give a little, nay, a lot of flection.
In these narratives we find
Humor and tragedy, a solid bind
With swaying rhythms of the lyrical word
A right match for the beauteous hummingbird.
And here the spoken language proves rich again
To truly grasp, do you have to be from the islands then?
To this I cannot comment
For I am a daughter of the trident.
Perhaps though, some subtleties are lost
To authors and readers—but at what cost?
Writers have toiled long at words they sawed
Just so those could understand abroad.
But the meaning behind each story is clear
As they create what they each hold dear.
They’ve sharpened and harpooned their spear
With words and actions most severe,
Striking at the heart of what matters
Apathetic to whom they piss off or whom they flatter.
From the political turmoil of one nation
Themes dealt from immigration to dislocation,
Something as small as the turtle’s extinction
Forces one to question its utter creation,
Or the use of a crab’s perspective as a metaphor
To juxtapose the impending future with the before.
Barbara Jenkins, the centerfold
This woman’s work, a sight to behold
Wielding her pen, a true artisan,
One destined
To tantalize us with descriptions of ‘pewter sea’ or
‘flaccid branches dripped white sap,’ More!
I scream, ‘butter-yellow pumpkin vine flowers,’
Thank goodness she doesn’t cower
But plows, ‘to a frying pan of aromatic coconut oil,’
Plumbing the depths of this island’s soil.
She, as it’s said, was a hard act to follow
And though enjoyable, the rest was hard to swallow,
Unconnected, lacking emotion, and dry
I was in search of something equally spry
And found, ‘Spun like a drowsy river,’
But ‘twas only a sliver
And ‘His face is like dark coffee beans after roasting,’ such small doses
What the heck, I thought, and so stopped to smell the sparse roses.
Jenkins’s story was that successful
For her snapshots were not tedious, never stressful,
They didn’t impede the story in any way
While others after seemed to harden and clog like clay.
That said, retrieving folklore
Was intense, no bore
As Singh spun a tale around the duenne
Harkening back to many religions.
The second half was filled
With the run of the mill
Book reviews, interviews, and essays
Of the kind that allow my mind to stray
But held on I did, till the very end,
The very last word, the spine I did bend.
There was plenty of talk of regeneration, redemption, and voices
To me, as a creative writer seeking just that, it was just too many noises
That put my head in a spin
If I dare say so with a grin.
The one that emerged was on women and gardens
Boring? Cliché? You think. I beg your pardon—
‘Caribbean garden both real and imagined’
Me, her tutee, burgeoned.
Culture and colonization, we cannot escape
She took these things and gave it shape.
In the context of gardens created by women
I deeply felt the relationship as her kinsman.
I must commend, for The Caribbean Writer has amassed
Humor in one issue that is unsurpassed.
Nature and Ecology it was themed
A hell of an installment it shall be deemed.
To The Caribbean writer, I thank thee
For choosing to publish someone like me
And if at all you don’t trust me
Hustle and grab yourself a copy.
