Black Crow Dress

by Roxane Beth Johnson

Overview

"These poems move forward like a novel in verse with a real understanding of the differences between the past and history. Or, as Johnson herself says in the opening poem, 'Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom.' This is a poet the best readers will be reading for the rest of their lives."—Jericho Brown

A haunting collection of lyrically intense persona poems, Black Crow Dress is at once about the emancipation of slaves in their myriad voices as well as a meditation on the self. The collection's lush imagery takes us from churchyard to church, chanting the old spirituals, as Roxane Beth Johnson seeks to embody the spirits of the dead: Clea, Caroline, and Zebedee.

From "Slave Ancestors Found Unburied in a Dream":

Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom

them alive in this room like water softens beans.

Leaning near, close to me they see my tooth & tongue

that test doneness, licks stamps & hums.

Their ear listens to what a hand might fiddle

if it had fingers.

Stare this way with eyes like smudges . . .

Roxane Beth Johnson's first book of poetry, Jublilee (Anhinga Press, 2006), won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She won an AWP Donald Hill Prize in Poetry and a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and has received scholarships and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vermont Studio Center. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882295951
Publisher:	Alice James Books
Publication date:	01/01/2013
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Roxane Beth Johnson's first book of poetry, Jublilee (Anhinga 2006), won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She won an AWP Prize in Poetry and a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and has received scholarships/fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has appeared in: The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Image, Callaloo, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Beloit Poetry Journal, Chelsea, ZYZZYVA, The Bitter Oleander, Sentence, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.

Table of Contents

i

Slave Ancestors Found Unburied in a Dream 1

How This Book Begins: I Wake to a Roomful of Slaves 2

Middle Passage 3

Tobias Finch Discusses His Obsession from the Grave: His Slave, Caroline 4

Tobias Finch Discusses His Two Children: Prudence and the Mulatto Zebedee 5

Prudence Finch Remembers Her Slave, Clea: First Memory 6

The Slaves Tell about Mistress Finch 7

Seven Years Later Prudence Finch Cared for Her Half Brother, Zebedee 8

The Slaves Tell All 9

Caroline Remembers Her First Mistress, Darla Ford 10

Prudence Finch Remembers Her Slave, Clea: Second Memory 11

Tobias Finch Tells How He Raped His 11-Year-Old Slave, Clea 13

Clea's Side of the Story 14

What Caroline Would Like to Say to Tobias Finch 15

The Slaves Tell How Clea, Age 14, Is Ruined 16

Clea and Caroline Sing a Workday Song 17

Hush-Harbor Scene: The Slaves Sing 18

How the Handsome Mulatto Zebedee, Age 18, Fell in Love with the Crippled Clea 19

ii

Clea's First Note Sent to Zebedee 23

Clea's Workday 24

Zebedee Walking Behind Slave Quarters at Night 26

Zebedee Plans to Escape 27

To Auction 28

Zebedee Is Sold and Caroline Works On 29

Tobias Finch Defends Selling Zebedee 30

Zebedee Tells What It's Like to Be Sold 31

That African Who Jumped Ship Jumps In with the Bad News about Zebedee 32

Zebedee at the New Plantation 33

Thirteen Notes from Clea Unsent to Zebedee 34

Escape with Shirt and Body 37

Clea Gives Up Waiting 38

Prudence Finch's Dream about Clea 39

The Last Days of Slavery 41

Caroline's Side of the Story 42

Clea, Circa 1905 43

Plenty 44

iii

The Slaves Arrive and Do Not Leave for Months 47

Clea's Ghost Comes for an Extended Visit 48

Zebedee States the Reason for His Visit 49

Dream Visitor 50

Clea, Living and Dying 51

The Slaves Remember the End 53

Caroline Confronts Tobias Finch 54

What Clea Says Before She Goes 55

Slaves Out Back in My Garden Among the Zinnias Are 57

Goodbye to My Favorite Ghost, Clea 58

Editorial Reviews

Ancestors haunt this book and “each one is hungry a voice.” Johnson gives voice to slaves Clea, Caroline, and Zebedee (“My little pain,” Zebedee says. “There is this living. I don’t know how to let it go”), and also to the family Finch that owns them (“Her hands on my piano are dark feathers dusting bones,” says Prudence Finch of Clea. “She does not need music to play it”). Split into two sections—the first following the experience of life in slavery, and the determination to grasp onto even a life in chains, and the second, “Afterlife,” addressing if and how plight is inherited—the book has its most gripping moments when Johnson explores the complexities of her own project to declare the suffering of others: In “Zebedee at the New Plantation” she begins, “He resists me writing the word new in the title of this poem. And the word plantation irritates him. He wants you to know forge, anvil and hammer were the tools he had and never did he touch a head of cotton.” The poems, mostly in bursts of prose, aim toward transcription for the voiceless where there could be none—and when voices of the unreachable falter, these figures, for Johnson, “make orchids bloom and create a nice echo in the bathroom, where I can sing.” (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

. . .a stunning collection that evokes a tragic, unjust world; Johnson has a gift for metaphor and narrative that builds throughout.” —Library Journal, starred review

“These poems move forward like a novel in verse with a real understanding of the differences between the past and history. Or, as Johnson herself says in the opening poem, ‘Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom.’ This is a poet the best readers will be reading for the rest of their lives.” —Jericho Brown

“. . .Black Crow Dress is a vital addition to any contemporary poetry assortment.”
—Midwest Book Review

“Roxane Beth Johnson reminds us the poet’s inscrutable work is to listen. Her abiding presence creates a lamplit space to commune with the ghosts of her ensalved ancestors and to breathe them onto the contemporary page. The result is startling: narratives tender and haunting, of an unforgettable intimacy. These voices were in the room with me; I felt them in my body.” —Jennifer K. Sweeney


“. . .a stunning collection that evokes a tragic, unjust world; Johnson has a gift for metaphor and narrative that builds throughout.” —Library Journal, starred review

“These poems move forward like a novel in verse with a real understanding of the differences between the past and history. Or, as Johnson herself says in the opening poem, ‘Each one is hungry for a voice & music to re-bloom.’ This is a poet the best readers will be reading for the rest of their lives.” —Jericho Brown

“. . .Black Crow Dress is a vital addition to any contemporary poetry assortment.”
—Midwest Book Review

“Roxane Beth Johnson reminds us the poet’s inscrutable work is to listen. Her abiding presence creates a lamplit space to commune with the ghosts of her ensalved ancestors and to breathe them onto the contemporary page. The result is startling: narratives tender and haunting, of an unforgettable intimacy. These voices were in the room with me; I felt them in my body.” —Jennifer K. Sweeney

From the Publisher

Philip Levine Prize-winner Johnson (Jubilee) here gives dramatic voice to the slave experience through compelling persona poems. In these 47 mostly prose poems, the reader experiences the perspectives of three slaves—Caroline, Clea, and Zebedee—and, as counterpoint, the views of their owner, Tobias Finch; his wife, Mistress Finch (who tries to kill Zebedee because of his white skin); and Prudence, Zebedee's half-sister. The first-person accounts are strongest, as when Zebedee says, "I sleep without a marker. Think of me. Like/ a stone, leave me for ages under a cypress then carry me for a while in your pocket,/ throw me into another river. No more." Johnson effectively captures authentic details that impart a feel for some of the horrors slaves experienced, including Caroline's repeated rapes by her master. Another stunning section shows Prudence trying to save her half-brother, who is chained in the barn at night. Most of Johnson's poems are so original and well sculpted that the occasional wordiness or trite phase stands out. VERDICT On the whole, a stunning collection that evokes a tragic, unjust world; Johnson has a gift for metaphor and narrative that builds throughout.—Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN

Library Journal