June JordanRecensioni

I just finished reading this about 15 minutes ago and am once more in awe of June Jordan. This is a masterful, poetic, piece of prose. The language is so beautiful and powerful, the characters so richly drawn and real. Buddy is a brilliant observer of both the beauty and injustices in our world. His youthful perspective and energy compel him to reconfigure the world in small and big ways. He is a true hero and leader, transforming the lives of everyone around him by never accepting that things can't be different then they are and then proving that point by changing everything in his way.

Sometimes the metaphors strike me; sometimes the imagery, but overall there is a lyricism here that's so inescapable. This collection spans a large span of time, but there were some particular highlights for me. It's always interesting to see poets respond to each other, and in this I loved Poem for Joy [Harjo]. What stays with me is the baseline of On a New Year's Eve, that helps inform thoughts of Annie Dillard's work; in my head at least. It's rare to me to see a collection of poetry that is so varied, but that builds to such a succinct point, such a lesson in that final line. I'm glad I got to read it.

Variety of Paintings welcome - poetry strong, but uneven - wish for an updated version.

June Jordan’s Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood certainly has the subject matter for an enthralling tale. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Jordan (1936-2002) learned to love literature from her loving and abusive father. She grew up in New York at a time when her life experience covered some dramatic changes in the lives of African- and Caribbean Americans. The book was “A Best Book of 2000″ by both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

The details of her memories are those of a poet, and therefore rich and evocative. Her story is personal and specific, but also important as an addition to the voices of People of Color in this country.

But the book has no real sense of being a memoir. The very difficult work of memoir is forging all those bits of one’s life into a compelling narrative. Instead, Jordan catches them like butterflies in a net and lets them flit off each other from one fragment to the next. While I found her life fascinating, I had to struggle to keep the momentum because there was no urgency or tension or cohesion to the story. Maybe that is an overstatement. At least, there wasn’t enough of those elements to satisfy this reader.

I did learn from reading this book. It showed me just how much I want to create a thickly textured and urgent story in my own memoir.

The book would be a wonderful source of material for a biographer of Jordan–or for a literary critic who is writing about the poet. But for an engaging nonfiction read, I would choose a different book.

Powerful, socially aware, and passionate, this is a collection worth reading that begs to be read aloud. Jordan's voice is engaging and powerful throughout the poems here, ringing with anger and passion and belief. Exploring politically and socially relevant issues and actions, as well as the details of day to day relationships, Jordan's voice is masterful in communicating with readers through graceful impassioned language. I think this is one of those collections ideal for every poetry reader, capable of enthralling the experienced reader and writer, and inspiring young readers and writers forward.

In short, absolutely recommended. This may not be the most complex or multi-layred poetry, but it is important poetry from a clearly gifted poet.

His Own Where by the late poet June Jordan is a short YA book that reads more like a prose poem. It was originally published in 1971 but was recently reissued by The Feminist Press. It is notable for being written entirely in what we now call Black English.

Buddy Rivers, age 16, and Angela Figueroa, age 14, meet in the hospital where Angela’s mother works and where Buddy is watching over his father, who was struck by a car. When Angela’s mother complains to her husband that Angela went off with a boy (Buddy was merely walking her home), Angela’s father beats her so badly she needs hospital care. Social services sends her to a home for girls, and her vicious, cruel parents are happy to see her go.

Buddy, loyal and caring, is determined to help free Angela from the confines of her rotten life. When he visits her at the Home for Girls, Buddy sees her distress:

"Angela sound funny. Hoarse. Buddy feel scare that she will cry.

‘Angela! I break you outa here!’

‘What you mean? What you saying?’

‘Listen baby, I mean liberation. Here and now! All you gotta do is follow me!’

Tears come from Angela.”

They are still just kids and Buddy is a dreamer, but he also has learned from his father the ways of trying to make his dreams come true. He and Angela run away, and try to make it on their own.

Discussion: This is a most unusual book in terms of its narrative technique, and yet it also is reminiscent of the stream-of-consciousness narratives employed at the beginning of the modernist period. The rhythm and music of the streets of New York infuses the prose. When Buddy and Angela walk home, they see:

"Streets turning off except for candystores, and liquor stores and iron grates dull interlocking over glass. Except for the bars the people party high knees and feet poke rapid sharp toward an indoor kitchen, bedroom. People hurry calmly from the nighttime start to glittering like oil.”

Their one place they can safely be together is in the cemetery:

"Cemetery let them lie there belly close, their shoulders now undressed down to the color of the heat they feel, in lying close, their legs a strong disturbing of the dust. His own where, own place for loving made for making love, the cemetery where nobody guard the dead.”

This book was a finalist for the National Book Award. June Jordan was a Professor of English at SUNY, Professor of African American Studies at Berkeley, a poet, feminist, pacifist, and social activist, who died much too young of breast cancer in 2002.

Evaluation: This is a touching love story and an urban poem all in one. It is impossible to read without hearing the wail of a tenor sax flow around and through the story like a bluesy jazz ballad. You can hear it wafting over the sights and sounds of the city to envelop these two homeless, drifting kids into the home and hope of each other.

Although it has been several years since I first read this book, it still holds a place of high recommendation. The writings were challenging and invigorating.

Good foundation reading for teachers looking to include more personally relevant writing in their classrooms. Also includes some interesting discussion of whether there is any validity in the English Lit cannon. Delves into some of the issues that can come up in a culturally relevant classroom. Not a collection of June Jordan's poetry. This one was written for people who teach and/or lead writing groups.

A pioneering collection of the work of Black American poets (including Claude McKay).