nappy edges, by Ntozake Shange
St. Martin's Press (1st U.S. paperback edition), 1991
In a recent workshop, poet Thomas Lux told his students that in today's poetry market, if you use the lowercase i it will automatically brand you an amateur. In the same class, he also noted that if you are going to break grammatical rules, you should at least do so consistently.
Personally, I have always had a difficult time reading poetry that breaks rules of proper grammer. That is, until I read nappy edges, by Ntozake Shange.
Shange's poetry collection abandons grammatical rules, with lines sprawling across the page, or clipped to single words, scant use of capitalization, and sporadic use of punctuation. These poetic devices, as well as her liberal use of shorthand in writing words like yr (for your) and wd (for would), impart a sense of urgency of thought to the reader. For example, these lines from "Night Letter #3":
if you cant remember dreams/ i cant be yr friend
if you dont
keep
the
appointment
Much of Shange's writing is infused with references to blues singers. In one section of the book, Love & Other Highways, the poet herself seems to be writing blues lyrics. Like in "lotsa body & cultural heritage":
listen cecil mcbee/ listen heah ike turner
got me all gainst the wall & i waznt goin nowhere
nowhere but
home
nowhere but home
you bettah tell somebody to meet me
tell somebody to meet me
nappy edges is not all poetry, though. It contains reprints of Shange's essays that appeared in Ms. and Barne's Landing, and a transcript of a speech delivered at the National Afro-American Writer's Conference at Howard University in 1977.
I was blown away by the power of Shange's writing and look forward to someday seeing her perform her works. This is urban, urgent, and utterly captivating writing from one of the U.S.'s foremost African-American female poets.
