My response to this book, a local book club selection, was lukewarm. Finney is certainly an accomplished poet, capable of subtlety, complexity, and wonderful word play. However, this book has shown me how political poetry often doesn't work. I can understand writing a poem or poems about a politician or political event. In fact, I don't think that is done often enough. But that poem will have a short shelf life. Thus, I have no interest in reading a 19 sonnet sequence about George Bush. The music-related "suite" on Condoleeza Rice was somewhat more engaging with it's ongoing piano and music metaphors, but I was never that fascinated with her to begin with and the poems do not create a new fascination (either positive or negative). She just seems bland.On the other hand, I loved the poem about Rosa Parks, "Red Velvet," because it makes the dowdy profession of seamstress become threatening:A woman who understands the simplicity pattern, who wears a circle bracelet of straight pins there, on the tiny bend of her wrist. A nimble on-the-dot woman, who has the help of all things, needle sharp,silver, dedicated, electric, can pull cloth and othersher way, through the tiny openings she and othersbefore her have made.A fastened womancan be messed with, one too many times.To me, this poem, though highlighting a person who committed an act that became a watershed moment in the civil rights movement, is about the human spirit, and the accumulation of small actions, in a way that the Bush and Rice poems are not.The poem about Strom Thurmond, "Dancing with Strom," is enough NOT about Thurmond that it was successful to me. Thurmond is a figurehead of entrenched political racism, while the poem is about two entirely different responses to him, enduring revulsion and amusement at his defeat, both treated as valid. And both embodied by people who are part of a wedding he is attending.This book is far from being solely political. Its charm for me lies in its many depictions of strong women, from a cranky old woman who refuses to retreat in the face of a hurricane to a girl fascinated by lightning. Its complexity lies not only in dealing with race and class, our various responses to both, but also that the personal and the political are interrelated. What makes a hurricane seem like a minor inconvenience to an old black woman? Why does the fascination lightning/power mark the girl as an "Old Maid-to-be." It's a rare poem here that doesn't bring the person into relationship with the larger society. One that does seem purely personal is "Cattails," which sets up an interesting abstraction by referring to the women involved as the one "who drives" and the one "being driven to." It sets up an interesting tension between the person motivated by passion and the person who is the surprised object of passion. It's a poem full of enjoyable playfulness.[....] The didn't-know-she-was-coming-woman stares at she who has just arrived.She tries to read the mighty spinach leaves in her bowl, privatelymarveling at the driving woman's muscled spontaneity. [...]And further on:[....] She wonders where this mad drivingwoman will sleep tonight. She is of two driving minds. One con-vertible. One hardtop. [...]This book also provides a wide variety of stanzas and line lengths. Her verse is markedly free, sometimes prosy and descriptive or narrative and sometimes broken and leaning toward the surreal. This variety is part of what kept me reading. Despite the virtues of this volume, I'm not going to run out and buy more books by Finney. I have respect for her now that I've read her work, but this volume hasn't made me hungry to read more. Alas, I'm at a loss to say quite why. Back in the early 80s, my friend Geoff and I went to a play at the Provincetown Playhouse in downtown New York. An NYU group (sorry, Riah) was presenting a "Brechtian" political satire directed at Reagan's presidency. By the time it was over, I was on the verge of signing up as a Republican as a protest against the self-righteous smug simplistic (continue to fill in adjectives as long as you feel like it) posturing.This book of poetry makes me feel much the same way. On a very abstract level, I share most of Finney's political preferences (in favor of the wisdom of an older generation of African Americans, against George W Bush and idiotic TV anchors, etc.) But by the time I'd made it half way through this book, I was dreading what would come next. The shots are almost all cheap, the perspective smug (see above for adjectives). Worst of all, for a book of poetry, the language lies flat on the page.There's a seal on the cover that says this won the National Book Award for poetry, which is no doubt what led me to it. Beats the hell out of me why.To be very clear--this one star review is coming from within the circle of long-time readers and admirers of African American poetry. For a sampling of what's happening now, skip this and go to Patrica Smith, Terrence Hayes, Yusef Komunyakaa, Wanda Coleman, or even Rita Dove, not a big favorite of mine but someone who covers some of the same turf as Finney with delicacy and grace.
What do You think about Head Off & Split (2011)?
SIX WORD REVIEW: Finney has a novel in her.
—kaye
NPR recommendation; National Book Award
—middleton
