Reviews for Tales of a Wayside Inn

The average rating for Tales of a Wayside Inn based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-03-31 00:00:00 John Becanitch Collecting together all ten of June Jordan's poetry books, Directed by Desire displays the impressive breadth of the poet's career. Inspired by what she referred to as the poets of the New World (Whitman, Hughes, Neruda, etc.) Jordan wrote accessible poems, characterized by terse, fast-moving lines, evocative images, and the inclusion of multiple voices. The poems are informed by a strong sense of the horrors of social injustice as well as the pleasures of eros, and they deal with a wide array of subjects, from forgotten Black historical figures to passionate romances. As with any poet's collected works, many of the poems fall flat, and A June Jordan Reader, containing the best of both her poetry and her essays, seems like the better place to start for readers new to her work.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-08-19 00:00:00 Scott Midgley A modern day Walt Whitman, but she is even better, how is it that I have never heard of this poet? Oh right, she is an Carribean-American woman of color who had nonconforming political views and used language in a different way, and was bisexual, so they buried her and her voice. These poems were startling and abrasive and calm and uniting. I can't even talk about them, they are that phenomenal. What I can say is that she covers every single subject possible in the world, and veers from a colloquial, informal voice to writing poems for the UN and every single other subject in history: civil rights, slavery, the protracted war in Ireland, troubles in the middle east, troubles in Africa, rape in the US, Clarence Thomas, South Africa, suicide, gender, sexuality, the Newport Jazz Festival. Oh and camping and the redwoods. And more and more and more. I have never read a poet that combined a lifetime of life and aliveness like this. I cried at her voice and her power, and her witness to the most shameful times in our country's history. They weren't all easy to read but need to be read and shared and felt. I will return to this again and again, this was just the first reading. ________________________________________ from the preface: "Her poetic sensibility was kindred to Blake's scrutiny of innocence and experience; to Whitman's vision of sexual and social breadth; to Gwendolyn Brooks's and Romare Bearden's portrayals of ordinary black people's lives; to James Baldwin's expression of the bitter contradictions within the republic. Keeping vibrations of hope on the pulse through dispiriting times was part of the task she set herself. She wanted her readers, listeners, students to feel their own latent power' of the word, the deed, of their own beauty and intrinsic value; she wanted each of us to understand how isolation can leave us defenseless and paralyzed. She knew, and wrote about, the power of violence, of hate, but her real theme, which infused her style, was the need, the impulse, for relation. Her writing was above all dialogic: "reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready? I am a stranger learning to worship the strangers around me whoever you are whoever I may become." These are poems full of specificity- people and places, facts, grocery lists, imaginary scenarios of social change, anecdotes, talk' that June Jordan voice, compelling, blandishing, outraged and outrageous, tender and relentless with the trust that her words matter, that someone is listening and ready for them." SUNFLOWER SONNET NUMBER TWO "Supposing we could just go on and on as two voracious in the days apart as well as when we side by side (the many ways we do that) well! I would consider then perfection possible, or else worthwhile to think about. Which is to say I guess the costs of long term tend to pile up, block and complicate, erase away the accidental, temporary, near thing/ pulsebeat promises one makes because the chance, the easy new, is there in front of you. But still, perfection takes some sacrifice of falling stars for rare. And there are stars, but none of you, to spare." POEM NUMBER TWO ON BELL'S THEOREM, OR THE NEW PHYSICALITY OF LONG DISTANCE LOVE "There is no chance that we will fall apart There is no chance There are no parts. " Because cowards attack by committee and others kill with bullets while some numb by numbers bleeding the body and the language of a child Who would behold the colorings of a cloud and legislate its shadows legislate its shine? Or confront a cataract of rain and seek to interdict its speed and suffocate its sound? Or disappear the trees behind a nomenclature no one knows by heart? Or count the syllables that invoke the mother of my tongue? Or say the game goes the way of the wind And the wind blows the way of the ones who make and break the rules? ............... because because because as far as I can tell less than a thousand children playing in the garden of a thousand flowers means the broken neck of birds I commit my body and my language…" "These poems they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready? These words they are stones in the water running away These skeletal lines they are desperate arms for my longing and love. I am a stranger learning to worship the strangers around me whoever you are whoever I may become." Who Look at Me Who would paint a people black or white? For my own I have held where nothing showed me how where finally I left alone to trace another destination A white stare splits the air by blindness on the subway in department stores The Elevator (that unswerving ride where man ignores the brother by his side) A white stare splits obliterates the nerve-wrung wrist from work the breaking ankle or the turning glory of a spine Is that how we look to you a partial nothing clearly real? I am impossible to explain remote from old and new interpretations and yet not exactly look black sailors on the light green sea the sky keeps blue the wind blows high and hard at night for anyhow anywhere new look close and see me black man mouth for breathing (North and South) A MAN I am black alive and looking back at you. sometimes you have to dance like spelling the word joyless Sometimes America the shamescape knock-rock territory losing shape the Southern earth like blood rolls valleys cold gigantic weeping willow flood that lunatic that lovely land that graveyard growing trees remark where men another black man died he died again he died When I or Else when I or else when you and I or we deliberate I lose I cannot choose if you if we then near or where unless I stand as loser of that losing possibility that something that I have or always want more than much more at least to have as less and yes directed by desire On the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the United Nations: 1970 "1 Of the world so beautiful the men and women easy like the waters interchange and changing make for change for children An ordinary struggle through the day ignores the natural tide below the waking crust the one and simple earth before the breaking of the waters birth or separation from an early urgent trust a solid continental walkland for the one and simple walking life And yet we do go on…" Excerpts from a Verse Diary of Somebody Trying to Get into Gear "for weeks I have been wanting to write this poem that would muffle my life with the horoscope of flowers that would join with rivers rushing along that would bolt and break up sentences midbolt and break impressively like mid- air somersaults from high- wire freedom eyes can scarcely capture to enrapture whirling words and abstract dervishes asplash in gutland reappraisal of the light we barely share because for weeks I have been wanting to make my move (as the saying goes).." "I find my way by following your spine Your heart indivisible from my real wish we compelled the moon into the evening when you said, "No, I will not let go of your hand." Now I am diving for a tide to take me everywhere Below the soft Pacific spoils a purple girdling of the globe impregnable." "The morning on the mountains where the mist diffuses down into the depths of the leaves of the ash and oak trees trickling toward the complexion of the whole lake cold even though the overlooking sky so solemnly vermilion sub-divides/ the seething stripes as soft as sweet as the opening of your mouth." "A family tremulous but fortified by turnips/okra/handpicked like the lilies filled to the very living full one solid gospel (sanctified) one gospel (peace) one full Black lily luminescent in a homemade field of love" Place to Stand "The forest dwindling narrow and irregular to darken out the starlight on the ground where needle shadows signify the moon a harsh a horizontal blank that lays the land implicit to the movement of your body is the moon You'd think I was lying to you if I described precisely how implicit to the feeling of your lips are luminous announcements of more mystery than Arizona more than just the imperturbable convictions of the cow headfirst into a philosophy and so sexy chewing up the grass." March Song "Snow knuckles melted to pearls of black water Face like a landslide of stars in the dark Icicles plunging to waken the grave Tree berries purple and bitten by birds Curves of horizon squeeze on the sky Telephone wires glide down the moon Outlines of space later" "…pieces of land with names like Beirut where the game is to tear up the whole Hemisphere into pieces of children and patches of sand Asleep on a pillow the two of us whisper we know about apples and hot bread and honey Hunting for safety and eager for peace We follow the leaders who chew up the land with names like Beirut where the game is to tear up the whole Hemisphere into pieces of children and patches of sand I'm standing in place I'm holding your hand and pieces of children on patches of sand" Bridget Song #1 "Late in the day and near a growing edge of redwood trees and following a solitary trail I saw you/fern ravine nirvana passing by but then you changed direction and came back to walk with me and I will never be the same Before you knew my name I knew nobody treads the earth as close as light as you And I am turned around because the ceremony of your movement slides along the shadow of a shining sound" "I WANTED NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES! I WANTED NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK! I WANTED NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR KNEES! I WANTED YOU I WANTED YOUR KISS ON THE SKIN OF MY SOUL AND NOW YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME…"