Kin - Softcover

Williams, Crystal

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0870135481 ISBN 13: 9780870135484

Publisher: Michigan State University Press, 2000

Synopsis

In her first book-length collection of poetry, Crystal Williams utilizes memory and music as she lyrically weaves her way through American culture, pointing to the ways in which alienation, loss, and sensed "otherness" are corollaries of recent phenomena. Williams writes about being adopted by an interracial couple, a jazz pianist/Ford Foundry worker and a school psychologist, and how that has affected her development as an African American woman. She tries to work out the answers to many difficult questions: in what way do African American artists define themselves? What do they owe the culture and what does it owe them? To what extent does our combined national memory inform our individual selves? These poems are steeped in the black literary tradition. They are brimming over with the oral tradition that Williams perfected while spending years on the poetry "slam" circuit. This, combined with her musical upbringing, give the collection not only a sense of urgency, but also a rhythm, a breath all its own. Kin tackles not only racial issues, but also the troubling realities of violent acts that can occur, especially in our inner cities. But more importantly, the landscape that Williams creates offers readers an alternative to the racial/political dichotomy in which we all live. Overall, the book resonates with a message of reconciliation that will leave the reader uplifted.

About this title

About the Author

Crystal Williams is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. She is a native of Detroit, Michigan, and author of Kin and Lunatic. Her poetry appears in magazines such as Luna, Fourth River, Callaloo, The Indiana Review, and in the anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation, Poetry Nation, Sweet Jesus, and Beyond the Frontier, among others. Her essays can be found in publications including Ms. Magazine. She has been a featured reader at venues across the country including: The National Arts Club, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Sarah Lawrence College. 

Reviews

Oral traditions, '60s and '70s protest poetry, present-day "slam" poetics and the considered compactness of page-oriented lyric are all fair game in Williams's debut. A Cornell MFA, Williams has also been a Nuyorican regular, and the exhortations, elegies and homages of the book reflect a careful awareness of code switchingA"Ivy and candied yams don't mix." Following the title, much of the work in the first half of the volume focuses on the speaker's adoptive interracial family; others address her network of friends, writers and artists of previous generations or "The First Time I Saw Flo-Jo." An especially striking evocation takes readers to "Greg's Beautification Shop" in Washington. D.C.: there, "The hours between Noon and dusk are the difference/ between good gossip and 'child, that's old news.' " A mordant poem to "Mr Sausage Lips" admonishes him, "don't be sneakin seconds/ when u ain't done wit the first/ don't be offering biscuits/ to folk who ain't hungry " Williams's triumphs can evoke June Jordan's poems of adolescence, or Kevin Young's more recent depictions of black family life. Her lesser work is hard to distinguish from that of other poets who mine the same themes, or who embrace a rhetoric of flat assertion. ("Ode of the Hoodoo Woman" lets readers know that "it was my high school boyfriend/ who may have never learned being a man means/ not dumping your girlfriend on the Prom eve.") Yet the fact that "I've eaten rabbit in Rome, paella in Barcelona, couscous in Morocco, and am seated at the worst tables by mentally challenged Maitre'd's who think my big ass is there for coffee" calls for straight talk, and Williams steps up unflinchingly. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A public poet of the oral tradition, Williams is a fixture at New York's Nuyorican Poets Caf and on the reading and slam circuit. The poems in this debut collection are conscious of voice, performance rhythm, gesture, and posture. Equally important, though, are the value and nuances of the word: "In some old men there is a softness/ in voice a hint of dusty Alabama/ summers of boyhood & swagger/ of their walk whispers of past/ glories." There is swagger, hip humor, and sassiness to Williams's poems. We encounter her family, including her father ("You were jazz and leather on a rainy day,/ soft and pliable") and mother ("When I die/ I will wear/ the face of my mother,/ gladly"). The concept of family is extended, though, and its effects are visible in many quarters of society. Her view of the world is clear and real, and the souls her poems conjure forth get to preen, strut, and dance, as Williams evokes the streets and the off-white corridors of the republic. Recommended for public and academic libraries, especially those with poetry, women's literature, and African American collections.DLouis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

For The Woman Who Didn't Know My Name

In some old men there is a softness
in voice a hint of dusty Alabama
summers of boyhood & the swagger
of their walk whispers of past
glories when their hips carried more
than bone & their torsos fattened ribs
& their feet them as small boys in play
around the spot in town where men once herded
my people. There were those games too.

In old men there are wrinkles perfectly placed where drops
of food & spittle settle. And they'll whisper of spat
tobacco of dogs of whips in tongues to their sons & girl
children & they to their sons & girl children.

The Famous Door

Be-Bop, De-Bop, Be-Bop
smooooooooth like sass
n jazz n momma-n-mary
at the bar n you singing Route 66'.

You, on the sneak, askin'
momma on a date n the cops followin
momma-n-mary home cause white
girls didn't hang out in (black) jazz bars
in 1966. Hell, proper white
girls probably didn't hang t'all.

N you at the ivory-n-ebony
crooning I Left My Heart...' to momma,
winkin n smilin n jazzin n profilin
n sangin n sangin
n sangin n soundin
sweeeeeeeeeeeeeee t.

Edition details

• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0870135481
• ISBN 13: 9780870135484
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 76