Doug Roy, Yellow Bird, Cut Paper
Dorothy Bell, April 4, 1963
Turning her back
into a forbidding wall
of ice is the waitress’s response
to your challenge to everyone
in this white’s only lunch counter
not only to read the message
inscribed in your choosing to come here
to begin with, but also, more
to the point, to witness your resolve
not to flinch, everything about you
expressing the determined belief
it will hit people, eventually, some people,
they do not have to experience the world
in the way they have always been told to.
___________
Ben Sloan
Review by Massimiliano Nastri
This is a poem I would call snapping the fingers: one image one action one place, seen panoramically, not by an I, but addressed to a you, that is: the I knows more, knows it all perhaps, but has dissolved into every object. It’s voice over but not from a pulpit, because of both what he says and where he says it, “despite it all, or maybe / because of it.” I suppose one may call it dramatic unity. Moving from the image/story to the sound, I did read it aloud a few times: trade-mark pen-sil parkt abovanear – herback / awallofice turned towardsu (Editor’s note: this line was revised out before pub). Though I could not find internal echoes, the waves, the alternation between caesurae moves toward that revealing turn (despite/because), a morality one call basic liberalism of decency, politeness eroding racism, because that is what it is.
Review by Jared Pearce
I like best the short comment, “despite it all, or maybe / because of it” which not only nicely shows the poem’s situation, but is also a good description of most of our lives that also dangle between a fight and a fling.