{"id":322,"date":"2015-04-27T15:33:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T19:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2015-04-27T15:33:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T19:33:13","slug":"review-of-darktown-follies-by-amaud-jamaul-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"Review of Darktown Follies by Amaud Jamaul Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Johnson<\/a>Amaud Jamaul Johnson. Darktown Follies. <\/em>Tupelo Press, 2013. 61 pgs. $16.95<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lynn Domina<\/p>\n

Darktown Follies, <\/em>Amaud Jamaul Johnson\u2019s second collection of poems, is intriguing both for its content and its craft. In fact, the first time I read it, I didn\u2019t think I understood it, but I returned for another reading because of the poet\u2019s skill with sound. The alliteration, the assonance, the consonance, the rhyme and near-rhyme\u2014he relies on it all, with enough originality to captivate the reader\u2019s ear and reinforce the content but not so much that it overwhelms the poems. As I began rereading the collection, I wondered why I\u2019d been confused the first time. This book is engaging and disturbing, or at least at times uncomfortable, as the reader both identifies with the speakers and understands herself to be critiqued by them.<\/p>\n

As an example, the opening poem, \u201cEncore,\u201d begins with a sentence that seems to have as its primary concern an exploration of metaphor:<\/p>\n

Take the architecture of the wrist,
\nhow the hands flit, hinged<\/p>\n

& bony as a blur of wing pulling
\neach egret across the slow drag<\/p>\n

of the lake, or the way the whole flock,
\ngiven the hound dog\u2019s solfeggio<\/p>\n

& the report-refrain of some pistol,
\nhow each tendon, how every muscle<\/p>\n

of the limb seems to reach
\nsome agreement & move.<\/p>\n

These couplets describe the movement of one joint in the human body, and though that movement may occupy only a few seconds of real time, the poem stretches it out in order to examine the movement in terms of other types of movement\u2014a bird or a flock of birds lifting from a lake. The language here is attractive: \u201cbony as a blur of wing,\u201d \u201cthe report-refrain of some pistol.\u201d The reader becomes invested in the attention and thoughtfulness the speaker devotes to such movement, the clapping of hands, which can<\/u> sound like \u201cthe report-refrain of some pistol.\u201d But then, after an extra space break, we read this:<\/p>\n

Even the box seats & the balcony,
\nthe taste of that song tangled<\/p>\n

like moss about my Adam\u2019s apple,
\n& I see them beginning to stand<\/p>\n

& applaud, & if I could spoon
\nout every eye, or fasten their tongues<\/p>\n

like red scarves around a flagpole.<\/p>\n

The first four lines of this second sentence seem to emerge logically from the first sentence, until we reach the caesura of line five. The wished-for violence and vengeance is particularly startling after the beautiful and nearly romanticized imagery of the first sentence. This is what I mean when I describe the reader\u2019s position\u2014at least this reader\u2019s position, this liberal white reader\u2019s position\u2014vis-\u00e0-vis the speaker of the poem. I believe I can understand the speaker\u2019s response, positioned as an entertainer whose racialized self is a component of the entertainment, and yet I also share the privilege of those who would comprise the audience. Whether or not I want that privilege (and who among us doesn\u2019t want privilege, at least sometimes), I have it.<\/p>\n

The poem continues with the speaker restraining his urge by recalling the benefits he will receive through this performance:<\/p>\n

\u2026Think,
\ncome morning, the both of us, rich men.<\/em><\/p>\n

So I wait for them to release
\ntheir bellies, to rest their elbows,<\/p>\n

to stop slapping their knees. I adjust
\nmy top hat, smooth my hands<\/p>\n

against my breast & tail. I step
\ncenter-stage. I steady, <\/em>I steady<\/em><\/p>\n

& bow.<\/p>\n

The audience of this performance likely believes they have been simply entertained, but if so, they are na\u00efve. Readers of the poem, however, cannot claim such innocence.<\/p>\n

Here is \u201cThe Front Matter,\u201d the second poem in the collection, which foregrounds many of the sonic effects that Johnson is so skilled with, but which also challenges readers to recognize that the playfulness of the language isn\u2019t all there is:<\/p>\n

Pity the ringdove, the silver-tongued
\nCoxcomb, throb and pulse, the hurly
\nBurly of the hurdy-gurdy man. Pity
\nThe pomp, all the prunes and prisms,
\nThat miscellany of light located beneath
\nThe lips and gums. It\u2019s all that cockeyed
\nPeacockery, the dumb show high flown,
\nGuffaw, and that garbled moonlight.
\nNow, I got the big talk. I\u2019ll play the heavy.
\nWatch me in my cap and bells, my jingle.
\nIn a nutshell, all patter and ballyhoo aside,
\nI\u2019m aping the Sun. I am the Jack-pudding.
\nI reckon to out herod Herod, <\/em>and trademark
\nMy move.<\/p>\n

The words in this poem are fun to say. Initially, it sounds simply exuberant, even raucous. The dynamism makes me want to laugh. But the speaker\u2019s desire to \u201cout herod Herod<\/em>\u201d sounds ominous, though what the speaker promises isn\u2019t as threatening as King Herod\u2019s decision. The speaker will \u201ctrademark \/ My move,\u201d forcing anyone who wants to incorporate his performance in another act to pay a fee. The speaker, in other words, is hitting his competitors, the theater managers and producers who might want to imitate his success, where it hurts. There\u2019s a lot more to say about this poem, particularly some of its allusiveness, but I also want to consider the second section of this collection in the space I have left. So rather than analyzing \u201cThe Front Matter\u201d more thoroughly, I\u2019ll leave it to readers to sit with it, reaching their own conclusions.<\/p>\n

The second section, titled \u201cThe Olio,\u201d is quieter and more personal. Even so, Johnson still exploits the sounds of English, and his ability to manage this for such different purposes testifies to his skill. For example, \u201cMidnight at the Abandoned Monastery\u201d begins with this stanza:<\/p>\n

We were reluctant to walk.
\nThe last few glasses of vino
\nHad tinted the dying Tuscan sky.
\nBut enough were game, so
\nThe girls changed into their sensible
\nShoes, and the overly prepared,
\nWho bragged about bow hunting
\nAnd the shades of deer blood
\nNear their Virginia home, had packed
\nPlenty of headlamps to please the mob.<\/p>\n

The alliteration, assonance, and consonance in this stanza are subtler than in \u201cThe Front Matter,\u201d but the poem nevertheless achieves its effect in part through Johnson\u2019s control of its sound. The poet\u2019s care with these poems encourages me as a reader to attend to them with equal care.<\/p>\n

The second section of Darktown Follies, <\/em>functioning as a second act to the poems in the first section, \u201cThe Walk Around,\u201d inevitably comments on those poems in the first section. The more personal nature of these later poems suggests that the performances described in the earlier section have not been relegated to the past. The ambivalence in relationships between audience and performer in early twentieth-century vaudeville continues to characterize relationships among Americans today. This collection reminds us how far the past is from being over.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

To propose a guest review or submit a book for potential review, fill out the contact form or contact Lynn Domina directly at lynndomina (at) gmail.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amaud Jamaul Johnson. Darktown Follies. Tupelo Press, 2013. 61 pgs. $16.95 Reviewed by Lynn Domina Darktown Follies, Amaud Jamaul Johnson\u2019s second collection of poems, is intriguing both for its content and its craft. In fact, the first time I read it, I didn\u2019t think I understood it, but I returned for another reading because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-areviewaweek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lynndomina.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}