MACNOLIA: The Microscopic Epic from Z-A
By Douglas Korb
Rarely does a poet’s sophomore book come along that shatters
and amalgamates the methods
of the first book at the same time. Yet, this is the case for A. Van
Jordan’s MACNOLIA. Jordan’s
first book, Rise, seemed a grappling between many different voices
that struggled between subjective
and narrative voice. Poems like “Cheating Woman Blues” and “Three
Stories of Cotton” showed
Jordan’s capability in stepping outside the realm of the “I” that
so permeates contemporary poetry.
“
A girl faces cruel / wind in a field of cotton. / She bends for no
one.” These
lines show a seed that was planted for a dramatic voice, blossoming
for the second book. In Rise, Jordan was less focused on the sequence
and more on the lyric poem. However, a small part of Rise was also
focused on developing
individual tones for dramatic speakers. Concerned with getting the character’s
tone across to the reader,
however brief a stay on the page, Jordan, like a scientist, wanted to show
readers different microscopic
slides of African American voices. With his second book, Jordan takes this
idea deeper and continues
in an anthropological and scientific way to investigate his characters. For
MACNOLIA, he changes the
lens on his microscope from what was 100X to 10,000X.
Jordan no longer shows his readers a city of voices from above that
he very craftily put together in Rise, rather with MACNOLIA he takes
us inside a life of a historic figure. The first word in the book
itself, on the
page of the first poem, tells us we are entering a life—“Interior—night.” Readers
are at the death bed of
Macnolia Cox. I remember asking myself, why Van? Why the setting? Several
answers came to me. Jordan
uses the screenplay / stage writing motif to give the reader a stage
marker upon which to stand. Reminiscent
of Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage and we
are just players,” Jordan plans to peel back the layers of one
life and show us how Macnolia’s story cannot be let go through
literary, historic, and human terms. So it is proper
to begin the journey where it ended as he does: “the bed’s
bones creak as death slips under the sheets…her lips
curl like dry, burning leaves into / a smile.” These lines gain
empathy from the reader for a character to whom he
or she has just been introduced as well as a rising curiosity to understand
why this dying woman shows a smile
as she dies. There is a confidence in the character’s action
that also exists in the poet’s writing. Jordan knows
he has grabbed his reader through his techniques and is ready to let
his story, or minor epic, unfold from there.
The book works wonders through its narrative speakers. Through two
main techniques, dramatic monologue and“
defining” lyrics (poems that move the narrative along through
giving the definition of a word), Jordan seeks to define a life.“
WITH: prep…6 in support of I wanted to hear him say he was with
me.”
Jordan’s look into the life of Macnolia is noteworthy not from
the perspective of an African American who achieved
great things, rather an African American who suffered for her achievements.
This is a new way of presenting suffering.
Rarely are there contemporary poems about people who achieve great
things then fall to the wayside to deal with everyday
battles between marriage and misfortune. Jordan handles himself expertly
by not telling us where the blame lies. He gives
us the voice of a woman’s struggle to achieve the need to feel “necessary” in
a society that deems her unnecessary, expendable.
Yet, Macnolia’s story overtly proves that it should be told because
Macnolia’s own history is born from the realm of words.
The spelling bee champion works not only to win for herself but also
her race. This drive to carry self and race can be seen in
numerous lines:
…Girl, savor what you learn
and spit it back as best you know how.
or
A woman carries a bag of laundry
as large as a mouthful of lies
or
Alone and black,
How can I stand in so much light?
How can I stand in all this darkness?
What Jordan presents is not only Macnolia’s struggle to achieve
what is rightfully hers (an equal, everyday life) but also the
dream to steer her culture forward by using the tool she’s been
born with: a gift to spell. How proper for an icon of early civil rights to have her power come from words!
Perhaps Jordan’s boldest leap is by taking a step away from the
solipsism that belies American society. Jordan doesn’t tell us
what he personally has encountered in society as an African American
male, he shows us with the acute accessibility of a good
historian how African American culture existed in the past and how
that history resonates up to the present:
What do you love,
When what you loved, really
Had no future?
MACNOLIA is the eye for culture, society, relationships, racial tension
and, well, poetry, at its keenest.