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a more perfect Union by Teri Ellen Cross Davis

Source: Purchased
Paperback, 70 pgs.
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a more perfect Union by Teri Ellen Cross Davis opens with “The Goddess of Blood,” a poem emerging from the blood of birth and death, much like a nation ripping itself from it’s parent nation. Davis’s collection doesn’t directly make these parallels but much of it is implied, and the subtlety of it can be overlooked as you get lost in the sensuous language of being a woman, birthing children, and much more in the opening poem. “my sacrifice, a carmine current soaked/the delivery bed.” (pg. 4)

In her narrator’s journey from Washington to Ireland to Kenya, we see a woman who is cognizant of how color is perceived in different situations — the blackest of the blackberries and the darkest current being the sweetest while teasing out deeper tones of darkness in Kenya in the sun is something never considered in the United States. Readers will note in “Black Berries” that there is this sense of forbidden, but we must stop and ask ourselves why is it forbidden when the blackest of berries yields the sweetest, most pleasurable taste?

From "3939 Strandhill Road, Cleveland, Ohio"

. . . Grief unravels

my tightrope. I rage at seeing the ground
rush up, my center of gravity gone.

Davis’ poems leave readers tumbling at times, hearing and seeing the past and the grief, but also the rage at what transpired. It is an anger that boils beneath, and there is a strong sense of family throughout the collection. It is of the utmost importance, so much so, there are gods among us. Stories we haven’t heard. “Baby Girl” is one of the most powerful poems I’ve ever read, and while I don’t want to spoil the read for you, I will say that it could be triggering for those who have experienced sexual assault and other similar traumas. Davis does not shy away from the big issues facing our children today, especially Black boys. In “Knuckle Head,” she takes them head on: “My son cannot continue this path. Black boys/can’t lose control at twelve, eighteen, even forty-three./they don’t get do-overs.”

In the second part of the collection, we’re taken not only a musical journey, but on a journey that creates for us new gods and goddesses — ones that speak the truth no matter how difficult and ones that see sexuality as freedom. “The First Gospel of Prince,” speaks: “The air sears between hips, this melody/is a startled beauty – breathe in halting sips.//” These poems are a musical treat, a homage to musical gods, and a look at how sensuality and sexuality don’t have to be hidden or set aside as we age.

One of my favorite poems, “This Poem Suggests Revolution,” speaks to the America we’ve seen — the one that is asleep at the wheel, coasting along the road with its eyes closed, only startled awake by the “occasional” beeping horn. “If the pursuit of happiness,/life, and liberty came from the creator, she is/about to backhand you in the face.//” We see that anger against an America that is willfully blind to its past and its continued faults. It seethes, but there is still a sense of hopefulness in a “rewriting” of the American story, a move toward an America closer to its ideals. The road is harsh, but the poet, the narrator, and the reader will come away believing in “a more perfect Union.”

a more perfect Union by Teri Ellen Cross Davis was a roller coaster of emotions, as it should be. It begs readers to see the America we are from the perspective of someone we are not (or even may be) and whose history we do share (even if we ignore it) in order to elicit empathy and action. We’re beyond the platitudes here. We are in the thick of the struggle, and we are called to action.

RATING: Cinquain

Don’t forget to check out my interview with Teri.

About the Poet:

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, 2019 winner of The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Haint winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She’s a Cave Canem fellow, member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, and lives in Maryland.

Interview with Poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Author of a more perfect Union

I am excited to share with you my interview with local poet Teri Ellen Cross Davis, author of the poetry collection a more perfect Union and Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

About the collection:

In the tender, sensual, and bracing poems of a more perfect Union, Teri Ellen Cross Davis reclaims the experience of living and mothering while Black in contemporary America, centering Black women’s pleasure by wresting it away from the relentless commodification of the White gaze. Cross Davis deploys stunning emotional range to uplift the mundane, interrogate the status quo, and ultimately create her own goddesses. Parenting, lust, household chores—all are fair game for Cross Davis’s gimlet eye. Whether honoring her grief for Prince’s passing while examining his role in midwifing her sexual awakening or contemplating travel and the gamble of being Black across this wide world, these poems tirelessly seek a path out of the labyrinth to hope.

Stay tuned for some video readings and more upcoming events with Teri (virtual and in person).

Please give Teri a warm welcome:

Savvy Verse & Wit: What is your earliest memory of poetry? Was it read to you? Did you write it? Did someone gift you a book of poems?

Teri Ellen Cross Davis: My earliest memory of poetry is less memory and more fact. My mother taught me to read to Nikki Giovanni’s work. She would read it to me – I was four. I remember the hard cover, tan and coarse, not the paper jacket, she’d taken that off and stashed it away somewhere probably like I do now with my children.

SVW: Can you recall the first poem you wrote and what it was about?

TCD: My first poem was in third grade. I was eight and it was about a squirrel. I sat in my living room and watched the squirrel from the safety of my house. The squirrel was running around the base of a wide oak tree in our backyard, right at the perimeter of a fence that separated our yard from the neighbor behind us. What I love about thinking about this is that my family just gave me that quiet time to sit there and watch that squirrel– no one demanded anything of me, I was just allowed that time and I discovered a poem.

SVW: Did you mimic someone else’s style? And how have you evolved in your poetic skills since then? Speak a little bit about your writing journey.

TCD: My writing journey is a long one. My mother gave me Maya Angelou I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings at 12 at the same time she gave me Carlos Castaneda The Teachings Of Don Juan. Both blew my mind. I also came across my mother’s college poetry books, so Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and an Oxford Edition of Modern Verse, which led me to Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Frost.

In high school, my English teacher gave me Ntozake Shange’s For the Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf and by then I had also started a poetry club inspired by my love of Edna Saint Vincent Millay. I continued reading poetry on my own and by college I felt confident/bold/reckless enough to read my poems aloud to an audience.

But it was at Cave Canem in 1999, which was also the first year I had a poem accepted for publication, that I truly laid claim to being a poet. And I will say that running a poetry series for 16 years has definitely had an effect on my voice and ability. I have brought in so many poets who range in terms of their style and to see that this variety exists lets me know that I have a place somewhere within this whole cannon.

SVW: As the poetry coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library, what’s your role and how does that work fit into the poetic culture of the D.C. region?

TCD: I select the poets and themes for the reading and themes for the overall seasons. I write up most of the material for marketing and remain the primary contact for the poets. I love using themes and collaborating with different organizations as I see these actions as ways for me to open up poetry and poets to a new audience.

In terms of how it fits within the poetic culture of the D.C. region, we occupy a national profile but on a local level. I try to involve local poets in introducing and moderating conversations with the poets but I also involve local poets as readers too. Taylor Johnson and Michael Collier are examples from this past season and I often rely on local poets for “Not Just Another Day Off” the Martin Luther King programming that I do at the Folger. And the series has history! I am coordinating the 53 rd continual season and am excited to continue adding the Folger’s tradition of bringing emerging and established poets to the actual or virtual stage.

SVW: In your new collection, a more perfect Union, music (especially Prince) plays a large role in your poems, why was it important for you to include Prince and others in your collection, exalting them like gods and goddesses?

TCD: Mainly because the influence of Prince on my work and in my life is like that of a God. His voice is in my head, his lyrics are the ones that I’ve committed to memory, and his music- it just makes my body move and touches my spirit. I think music is an incredible way to communicate to others, whether it’s about social issues, breakups, falling in love, having a child, like poetry, music just occupies this aural space and I want to honor that. I honestly listen to music every day. I like to think that somewhere inside me lurks a singer/songwriter!

Teri Ellen Cross Davis reads The Goddess of Cleaning:

SVW: Why is it important for poets to explore the new and old gods and goddesses? Your poems are infused with pop culture and the old world. How does this blending help readers see that the “more perfect union” is possible?

TCD: I’ve often chafed at the idea of fitting into any one category. I recognize that who I am is a layering of the old and the new, the high and the low, the avant guard and the mainstream and there’s nothing wrong with that. I try not to hold anyone element of that in higher esteem than the other.

I love letting my diction soar like a kid on the swings who then jumps off and hits the dirt. It’s so much fun to mix it all up and I think once we can let go of these ideas that we have to remain rigidly fixed into any one category and that we can’t respect the others, once we let that go, we can become fully realized people who can honor, respect, and acknowledge all of it. I loved my time with my great aunts and my grandparents and I loved my time in college hanging out and going to Freaknik.

I can be both of those people. Why can’t we all see the beauty in the old world- recognize the traditions and knowledge in those old gods- but also take in with fresh eyes and open hearts the new gods as they pop up? In such openness we stay fresh, we stay absorbent, and we continue to learn.

SVW: The book cover is as sensual as the poems inside. Is this collection a love letter and to whom?

TCD: Thank you for that! In many ways this collection is a love letter to the idea of America; an America that we haven’t seen rise to its full potential in terms of equality and freedom for everyone.

But it’s also a love letter to the American citizen, to the human being, who sees something greater in this country and knows how deeply it is flawed in its failings to live up to the ideals it presents to the rest of the world.

I just want to tell people “I see you and I feel the same way you do”- the frustration, the rage, the sadness, the disappointment and that perhaps together we can enact the change that we want to see and not wait on others to do it but at the same time I recognize that there are those in power who need to understand that so many of us have a righteous rage regarding this country and it needs to be acknowledged and we need to be heard. So this book is my barbaric yawp.

Thank you, Teri, for your candid answers, and I cannot wait to hear you read live in person.

Here’s a treat for my readers, a YouTube readings, and a list of upcoming readings on her schedule:

Poets in conversation feature on Politics and Prose Live! With Teri Ellen Cross Davis and Sandra Beasley:

About the Poet:

Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of a more perfect Union, 2019 winner of The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize and Haint  winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She’s a Cave Canem fellow, member of the Black Ladies Brunch Collective, and lives in Maryland.

If you are in the areas or online, check out her upcoming events:

Mailbox Monday #627

Mailbox Monday has become a tradition in the blogging world, and many of us thank Marcia of The Printed Page for creating it.

It now has it’s own blog where book bloggers can link up their own mailbox posts and share which books they bought or which they received for review from publishers, authors, and more.

Leslie, Martha, and I also will share our picks from everyone’s links in the new feature Books that Caught Our Eye. We hope you’ll join us.

ALERT: We’re looking for a new host to help us with MM — if you have experience with WordPress or Mr. Linky, feel free to apply.

Here’s what we received:

The Understudy’s Handbook by Steven Leyva, which I purchased.

Drawing heat and music (and luscious food) from a New Orleans and Houston childhood, Steven Leyva’s poetry reveals a sensibility forged by a growing awareness of race and class: child’s joy and bafflement, a black Baltimore father’s worry. These gorgeous poems sweep the reader as into a parade, of memory, sensation, rhythm, protest.

a more perfect Union by Teri Ellen Cross Davis, which I purchased.

In the tender, sensual, and bracing poems of a more perfect Union, Teri Ellen Cross Davis reclaims the experience of living and mothering while Black in contemporary America, centering Black women’s pleasure by wresting it away from the relentless commodification of the White gaze. Cross Davis deploys stunning emotional range to uplift the mundane, interrogate the status quo, and ultimately create her own goddesses. Parenting, lust, household chores—all are fair game for Cross Davis’s gimlet eye. Whether honoring her grief for Prince’s passing while examining his role in midwifing her sexual awakening or contemplating travel and the gamble of being Black across this wide world, these poems tirelessly seek a path out of the labyrinth to hope.

On the House by John Boehner, purchased from Audible.

Former Speaker of the House John Boehner shares colorful tales from the halls of power, the smoke-filled rooms around the halls of power, and his fabled tour bus.

John Boehner is the last of a breed. At a time when the arbiters of American culture were obsessing over organic kale, cold-pressed juice, and SoulCycle, the man who stood second in line to the presidency was unapologetically smoking Camels, quaffing a glass of red, and hitting the golf course whenever he could.

There could hardly have been a more diametrically opposed figure to represent the opposition party in President Barack Obama’s Washington. But when Boehner announced his resignation, President Obama called to tell the outgoing Speaker that he’d miss him. “Mr. President,” Boehner replied, “yes, you will.” He thought of himself as a “regular guy with a big job”, and he enjoyed it.

In addition to his own stories of life in the swamp city and of his comeback after getting knocked off the leadership ladder, Boehner offers his impressions of leaders he’s met and what made them successes or failures, from Ford and Reagan to Obama, Trump, and Biden. He shares his views on how the Republican Party has become unrecognizable today; the advice – some harsh, some fatherly – he dished out to members of his own party, the opposition, the media, and others; and his often acid-tongued comments about his former colleagues. And of course he talks about golfing with five presidents.

Through Speaker Boehner’s honest and self-aware reflections, you’ll be reminded of a time when the adults were firmly in charge.

Kindle Freebies from Amazon’s World Book Day through April 24:

What did you receive?