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Bezig met laden... Midden (Poets Out Loud)door Julia Bouwsma
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 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  avaland | Aug 15, 2021 |  geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
WINNER OF THE MAINE LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY! FINALIST FOR THE JULIE SUK AWARD! SELECTED AS ONE OF NPR'S 2018 GREAT READS! ONE OF BOOK RIOT'S 50 MUST READ POETRY COLLECTIONS OF 2019! In 1912 the State of Maine forcibly evicted an interracial community of roughly forty-five people from Malaga Island, a small island off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine. Though Malaga had been their home for generations, nine residents (including the entire Marks family) were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble Minded in Pownal, Maine. The others struggled to find homes on other islands or on the mainland, where they were often unwelcome. The Malaga school was dismantled and rebuilt as a chapel on another island. Seventeen graves were exhumed from the Malaga cemetery, consolidated into five caskets, and reburied at the Maine School for the Feeble Minded. Just one year after the start of the eviction proceedings, the Malaga community was erased. Midden confronts the events and over one hundred years of silence that surround this shameful incident in Maine's history. Utilizing a wide range of poetic styles--epistolary poems to ghosts, persona poems, erasure poems, interior poems, interviews and instructions, poems framed both in the past and in the present--Midden delves into the vital connections between land, identity, and narrative and asks how we can heal the generations and legacies of damage that result when all three of these are deliberately taken in an attempt to rob people of their very humanity. The book is a poetic excavation of loss, a carving of the landscape of memory, and a reckoning with and tribute to the ghosts we carry and step over, often without our even knowing it. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)811.6Literature English (North America) American poetry 21st CenturyLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (4.83)
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Midden: Poems by Julia Bouwsma (2018, poetry, US)
The Story of Fire
Our brushfires hung thick and black. They kept
us warm, cooked our pots of clams,
and every day the villagers smelled our smoke
from their porches on the mainland.
A stick on fire curls and curls,
each fiber glows as it peels
from the stalk. So it is with a story,
driftwood flames green to blue;
How they came in boats,
how our shacks caught like a shot of light
when match met kerosene. How we left
in their boats; how we huddled
close; how mama bent
to the baby, her crooked
arm clamping him
silent. How a child curled
mouth to smoky knees and bit
them to read.
A stick on fire—
Now. one hundred years later,
the archaeologists find
no ash, no scorched ground, no scraps
of charred wood, just loose nails
in the shell heap:
evidence that when the villagers said leave,
we willingly tore our houses down
with our hands.
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There is much that can be said of this poetry collection inspired by the story of the 1912 forced eviction of a small, multi-racial community living on Malaga island just off the coast of Phippsburg, Maine, but I will try to keep it brief. This is extremely well researched. The poet includes notes on more than half of the poems included, and her “afterword” offers her process. This is all more than most poetry collections include. Some of the poetry is written in the voices of the islanders who speak directly to the reader of their experiences, other poems elucidate the poet’s often emotional journey in the researching and writing of the volume. Both are compelling.
I thought the collection very moving, made more powerful in it’s careful conservation of words. And more is said sometimes in the spaces between words, you know? Each poem seemed to become deeper and clearer with subsequent reading (and the collection demands multiple readings, I think). I admit I was more drawn to the poems written in the islanders’ voices than the author’s, but it is a intertwined story, one needs the other.
One can find a number of articles on the Malaga Island by a simple search online. (