In Rice, her second volume of poetry, Nikky Finney explores the complexity of rice as central to the culture, economy, and mystique of the coastal South Carolina region where she was born and raised. The prized Carolina Gold rice paradoxically made South Carolina one of the most oppressive states for slaves and also created the remarkable Gullah culture on the coastal islands. The poems in Rice compose a profound and unflinching journey connecting family and the paradoxes of American history, from the tragic times when African slaves disembarked on the South Carolina coast to the triumphant day when Judge Ernest A. Finney Jr., Nikky’s father, was sworn in as South Carolina’s first African American chief justice. Images from the Finney family archive illustrate and punctuate this collection. Rice showcases Finney’s hungry intellect, her regional awareness and pride, and her sensitivity to how cultures are built and threatened.
In Rice, her second volume of poetry, Nikky Finney explores the complexity of rice as central to the culture, economy, and mystique of the coastal South Carolina region where she was born and raised. The prized Carolina Gold rice paradoxically made South Carolina one of the most oppressive states for slaves and also created the remarkable Gullah culture on the coastal islands. The poems in Rice compose a profound and unflinching journey connecting family and the paradoxes of American history, from the tragic times when African slaves disembarked on the South Carolina coast to the triumphant day when Judge Ernest A. Finney Jr., Nikky’s father, was sworn in as South Carolina’s first African American chief justice. Images from the Finney family archive illustrate and punctuate this collection. Rice showcases Finney’s hungry intellect, her regional awareness and pride, and her sensitivity to how cultures are built and threatened.
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Overview
In Rice, her second volume of poetry, Nikky Finney explores the complexity of rice as central to the culture, economy, and mystique of the coastal South Carolina region where she was born and raised. The prized Carolina Gold rice paradoxically made South Carolina one of the most oppressive states for slaves and also created the remarkable Gullah culture on the coastal islands. The poems in Rice compose a profound and unflinching journey connecting family and the paradoxes of American history, from the tragic times when African slaves disembarked on the South Carolina coast to the triumphant day when Judge Ernest A. Finney Jr., Nikky’s father, was sworn in as South Carolina’s first African American chief justice. Images from the Finney family archive illustrate and punctuate this collection. Rice showcases Finney’s hungry intellect, her regional awareness and pride, and her sensitivity to how cultures are built and threatened.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810152328 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/31/2013 |
| Pages: | 216 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Nikiky finney holds the John H. Bennett Jr. Chair of Southern LetterS and Creative Writing at the University of South Carolina. She is editor of the anthology The Ringing Ear: Black poets Lean South and the author of a short story collectioN, Heartwood. Her fourth collection of poetry, Head Off & Split, won the National Book Award for Poetry (Northwestern University Press, 2011).
Read an Excerpt
Rice
poems
By NIKKY FINNEY
Northwestern University Press
Copyright © 2013 Nikky FinneyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-5232-8
CHAPTER 1
The Blackened Alphabet
While others sleep
My black skillet sizzles
Alphabets dance and I hit the return key
On my tired but ever-jumping eyes
I want more I hold out for some more
While others just now turn over
Shut down alarms
I am on I am on
I am pencilfrying
Sweet black alphabets
In an all-night oil
Irons at Her Feet
from the coals
of her bedroom fired place
onto the tip
of my grandmother's
december winter stick
for fifteen years
hot irons traveled
into waiting flannel wraps
and were shuttled
up under covers
and in between quilts
where three babies lay shivering
in country quarter
nighttime air
hot irons
wrapped and pushed
up close
to frosting toes
irons instead of lip kisses
is what she remembers
irons instead of caramel-colored fingers
that should have swaddled shoulders
like they swaddle hoes
and quiltin' needles
and spongy cow tits
every time
i am back home
i tip into her room
tip again into her saucering cheeks
and in her half sleep
my mother reads her winters
aloud to me
her persimmon whispers are deliriously sweet
to this only daughter's ear
when you are home
she says
the irons come back
every night
i know the warm is coming
Yellow Jaundice
After the horizon
of my mother's eyes
and my father's
pinkish proudest first girl smile
I must have seen trees first
There in a semicircle
5 3 hundred year old
live oaks
drench draped
in hot august moss
in the beige sandy yard
where nothing else grew
no grass
just sand
and eventually me
5 3 hundred year old
live oaks
on racepath avenue
southern coastal
carolina
nineteen hundred and fifty-seven
When papa pulled the black valiant
all the way up to the house porch
so she wouldn't have far to walk
nor yellow-jaundiced new me
much sun to feel
I was home for the first time
riding high bone in mama's lap
Long before vertical or horizontal vision
I could see in the round
my mother's navel opening
as milky global eye
Still I love a circled-up window
still I see it round first
the bending circling trees catch me
before anything
From my first days
this madagascan nose pointed for
the atlantic-african sea
like babylips poking out
hungry for the milky nipple
I could hear calling
spitting out the ancestor crabs
from my incubating window
As I grew these other eyes
and could finally look above
and below me
after His and Her face
that I shall always know best
I surely must have high-glimpsed these ones first
5 3 hundred year old
live oaks
baobab standing
in a wide-arcing circle
a family of old wood
standing shoulder to shoulder to shoulder
at different sky heights
their feet immemorial stuck in seashell socks
in beige and white sand
where nothing else grew
but eventually me
I walk through and sleep in
that village of woody bones
the days and nights of childhood
still deeply rooted there
I hear their splintered venerable chanting
and step across the snake roots
that buckled up and ran from out of the ground
and cycloned scars around my legs
like age rings on top my skin
5 3 hundred year old live oaks
Sometimes I am still there
waiting for mother to get out of the car
pushing for her to get up out of the car
I want to look out again
for the first time and claim
my horizontal vision my vertical view
and walk that village path of old trees
that stood calling for me so long
to be home for the first time
My how they must have sung
tree songs
for me
the first time she put me down
and watched me take
my first steps in that wavy ocean soil
Could she have cautioned
about the snake roots
that would from then on be in my way
that buckled up and ran out of the ground
all over the yard
5 3 hundred year old live oaks
Or would she simply push me from the dock
armored in a cowrie-shell ship
my pockets full of everything I would ever need
and wave me well
She did not know even then
as I stumbled back to the hamper of her arms
even as I fell into my first bruises
but rose again
to the venerable wooden cheers and chanting
my tiny lips streaming cranberry
my coming-in tooth crooked and gapped for life
my tiny face wearing one complete coat of sand
not as mask but mussel
She did not know
as she let me fall
and watched me rise
this rising up
this falling back
this roundness
would be my life's work
first taught to me by her
last written and witnessed by wood
The Goodfellows Club
for FX Walker II
You are only kissing thirty
the younger son of near-extinct men
the likes of which
we won't never see again
the last of them kind
that rolled off the Old Man pan just so
mens I can't save
in no other way but this way
There are ones who know the difference
between everything
and just anything
who taught a son
schooled a daughter
by old grey firelight
passed from stick to smoky stick
Why they must be in their 50s by now
I know you seen 'em
but don't know if you knew
how much you was looking at
Athletes never fallen
who always played for the game
not the shiny quarter rolling towards them
on the ground
(quarterbacks couldn't sneak back then)
There was what you were expected to do
(because of what you had been given)
and there was nothing else
your work
whatever it was
was the everything about you
That's who you the last of
and times ain't changing they gone
ain't no more where you come from
Why they must be in their 60s by now
Mens who loved poker and cards
sweet on dominos
and could pop your knuckle and their own
just kindly placing a checker
on the board
they say Joe Louis's name
like it's the sweet key to the kingdom
keep big wooden radios that don't work
covered up with a clean cloth like they do
(or might again one day)
Jack Johnson
and a crying horn breaks they water
quicker than a new blade
from their medicine chest
do their stubbly jaws
They love womens and still take themselves
a look that way
their old necks might rivercrack
into another line or two
but they wouldn't yell out
a rolled-down window
no matter how pretty the face
no matter how tight the skirt
they'd smile and keep it to themselves
or wait till Friday
when they always congregate to talk
and they'd walk away in a minute
before ever lifting a finger wrong in her face
Somethings you should still keep to yourself
Somethings are still born private
They cut hair
work with the mail
and sold their filling stations for pennies
cause Junior got into State
and needed this and that
They sell insurance and mean it flew air squadrons and remember it
love rice and gravy and meet once a year
to wear something annual
something anybody would want to polish or salute
every time they set their wooden eye on it
they congregate once a week for a trim
at the red-striped swirling pole
that still spins for them
(don't you look for them in any mall)
They call themselves Goodfellows
The Gents
Zoophead
and Sonny Boy
and slap shoulders and palms
Some still tap their pocket watches
for the correct time
they might kiss a brother's cheek
if his cheek needed to be kissed
never batting an eye
they love each other
in the loud of hazy unforgotten days
Why they must be in their 70s by now
They love a fried anything
and won't eat without bread on the table
poke they belly
and you better run for cover
cause they is all ice tea
Football on Sunday
but only after church
(they ain't the deacon
but they are the whole row)
they keep their Seventh Day shirt on all day
and somehow never get it dirty
just loosen up the collar some
to let you know they been to pray for you and back
they love their coffee black
their eggs fried right
don't leave more than one yellow tear in the skillet
if you do eggs for them
shake down bushy black trees of pepper
Short little big feet mens
big high back giant reaching up mens
with tarps and canopies for chests
steering the same car
for twenty-leven thousand years
cause they don't make 'em like they used to
and they never buy but one
and forever patch up the best one ever
and lean back when they drive her
like they still only two minutes old
and no you ain't seen nothing like it
Deuces
Lincolns
T-Birds
And rattling Ford trucks
that all have a woman's name
and old candy bars and dusty handy fixing salve
that slide in the window
at every wide turn
and they don't marry but once
and watch yourself
when you say her sacred name
Holding on steamy men
who give their last buffalo red cent
for family
for a tradition
men who believed in making land
and keeping it to pass it on
so the children would always have something
Men who still pray so long before every meal
that the food should be cold
but it's not
they whispertalk in adult
to their infant chaps
then laugh out crazy loud
just like they can understand
and I can't
They pay for everything in cash
and keep money hidden everywhere
especially in trees they planted
a dinosaur ago
Never Owe Nobody
mine always says to me
last thing
before he falls couch asleep
I creep to cover him promising
X is how some of them had to sign
when they called up the vote
X was all
they X everything then
just like you X'n' everything now
Ain't no more
Traveling mens
who had already come cross one water
and had to cross
have to still sail a hundred oceans more
to keep the village inside of them
Mens
Who loved the railroad
the sea and anything
that kept them and their eyes moving on
who were merchant marines
and Pullman porters
and flying JesseOwens
Why they must be in their 80s by now
You are one of their missing boys
rolling off the Old Man pan
before anyone told you to
your edges browned
and the insides just now bubbling
"Is he ready, daughter?"
"Oh he's close, he's real close now, he's almost."
The old sweet kitchen women are asking for you
and watching
so stickily I let go
I need to finish what I started
You come from them that
love the sound of church
but might not stay for all that hollering
they smoke a little
drink a little
work a lot
they congregate up under trees and talk
they stop and tip any head coverings
when any nonmember in a skirt
comes around
Mens
of the Goodfellows Club
Why they must be in their 90s by now
Mason men with pyramid angled spines
standing steadfast beside
daughters of an Eastern Star
these ones who defined a fraternity
who first wrote the traditions
when it meant what it meant
who lay their hats
in the chair beside them
like favorite company
that always goes where they go
Mens
Who can stand still longer
than the five-minute national average
and stare at the same unmoving water all day
mud philosophers
patient as rain
who pull in a fighting fin or two
and be so satisfied
and talk about it for a hundred years
and tell a different story
every time
Mens
Whose laughter
ways
whose wondering eyes
I would bottle
but never sell
then purposely taint the milk of millions
if I could ever catch them
unready for me
but they talk
only the good talk
to each other
and stop whenever womenfolk come around
You are the last of these
always-got-a-hat-on
Black centennial poles
holding the ground
and everything standing on top of it
together
who always say No to overcoats
preferring to face the elements alone
and just as sweet as sugar thrown up in the air
in a coming-down-hard rain
Sugar
that's come down this one last time
condensed
in one dark and peanut butter sweet
Danville Brown
missing Persian roll
"Yes man, this one, he's done."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Rice by NIKKY FINNEY. Copyright © 2013 Nikky Finney. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword Kwame Dawes ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
Heel-Toe
The Blackened Alphabet 7
Irons at Her Feet 8
Yellow Jaundice 10
The Goodfellows Club 15
Cotton Tea 24
Harry and Jainey 26
Understudies 31
My Centipeding Self 39
Making Foots 42
Lightkeeper 45
In South Carolina: Where Black Schoolmarms Sleep 47
Black Orion 51
"God Ain't Makin' No More Land" 54
Thresh
The Afterbirth, 1931 65
Mary Mary Quite Contrary 72
The Sound of Burning Hair 74
Dinosaur 77
Pluck 80
The Devil Is Beating His Wife 87
Eskimo 91
Acquanetta of Hollywood 94
I Have Been Somewhere 102
The Butt of the Joke 103
South Africa: When a Woman Is a Rock 109
The Ostrich 112
Brown Country 113
He Never Had It Made 121
Winnow
The Turtle Ball 129
Tenderheaded 134
Living On What 138
Mae/I 140
Love Marrow 3 144
Mute 146
Permittable Thunder 148
The Vertigo 157
The Mapmaker 164
The Savoy, 1926 166
Daguerre of Negras 172
Woman Holdin' Up All Deeze Folks 176
Rule Number One 180
The End of It 182
A Woman with Keys 184
The Rice 186
List of Photographs 189