Reviews for The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South

The average rating for The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-28 00:00:00 Massimo Di Marcello I rarely, rarely give five stars to books that are not considered canonical or by living authors, but Nikky Finney's landmark anthology, like its successor, BLACK NATURE (ed. Camille T. Dungy, (UGA Press), IS already canonical. And Dungy, who first came to my attention through the "rogue snnets" of WHAT TO EAT, WHAT TO DRINK, WHAT TO LEAVE FOR POISON (Red Hen) has gone on to publish two other splendid individual collections, SUCK ON THE MARROW (also Red Hen, winner of the Northern California Book Award, the American Book Award, as well as a NAACP Image Award nominee), and now the just-released SMITH BLUE (Southern Illinois Press and winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Prize). Finney's title raises many of the usual arguments about identity politics and aesthetic quality. But another, and more personally interesting, comes from a different quarter: why is this anthology so much better than any Southern-based collection edited by a white writer in recent years? After all, these have contained African-American writers (and even women). But they have not been nearly as representative of the old and the young; the native-born Southerners and the emigrés, even the visitors; the formalists and the writers of free verse, not to mention Ebonics and spoken word poets. Forrest Hamer, most recently the author of RIFT (Four Way Books) from whose work the book's title is taken, is one of the better-known newcomers; others I'm delighted to say I originally wrote "to watch for" are Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, a 2010 NEA winner; Sharan Strange, Thomas Sayers Ellis, now nationally praised for SKIN, INC. (Graywolf), Hermine Pinson (check out DOLORES IS BLUE/ DOLOREZ IS BLUE (Sheep Meadow, 2007), Earl Braggs, Harryette Mullen (RECYCLOPEDIA, Graywolf, 2006), and Kendra Hamilton (THE GODDESS OF GUMBO (WordTech Press, 2006, author of "The Search for the Perfect Sidecar," in a 2009 issue of CALLALOO, and now at work on a new manuscript MIRROURS OF THE WORLD: POEMS INSPIRED BY LIE LIFE OF BELLE DA COSTA GREENE.) There are moments in Finney's anthology when readers might well feel that quality has been sacrificed for inclusiveness. Preferring gumbo to poached okra when it comes to such matters, if I may rely on what seems a heaven- (or at least Hamilton-) sent metaphor, licked the bowl clean. As for Dungy, assistant editor for GATHERING GROUND, the first Cave Canem anthology, SUCK ON THE MARROW won the American Book Award, and her newest collection, SMITH BLUE, has finally arrived. That soaring eagle on the cover, mentioned in a previous version of this essay, grasped my heart in its talons--to change metaphoric strands--which I read the epigraphs and the first poem, all of which are concerned with the difficulty of maintaining balance between private emotion that struggles to express itself through our sullen craft and art and the horrors dished out to us daily--forgive, please, the change of metaphors once again--by "the world, the world, the world," to quote a "cousin on the light side," the late Lynda Hull. (Please see my review of THE ONLY WORLD here.)

Review # 2 was written on 2018-03-07 00:00:00 Margaret Andrews Great collection. The collection contains various poetic styles. Anyone could pick this collection up and find poems that speak to them.