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Ode to The Caribbean Writer

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Ode to The Caribbean Writer
Review of Caribbean Writer, Fall 
2012
 by 
Krystal Sital
Rating: 
Keywords: 
Conventional (i.e. not experimental), 
Cultural focus, 
International

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—

Lim, Simmons, and Hawkins 

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.

 

 

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