Carver: A Life in Poems. - book review

African American Review, Summer, 2002 by Herbert Woodward Martin

Marilyn Nelson. Carver: A Life in Poems Asheville, NC: Front Street, 2001. 103 pp. $16.95.

When I was a young boy, the triumvirate in music was Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, and Paul Robeson. In the realm of intellect, sports, and science the kings were, respectively, W. E. B. Du Bois, Joe Louis, and George Washington Carver. Carver alone astonished the world with the simplicity of investigating the peanut. He seemed never to be able to dismiss, or take for granted, the ordinary in the environment that surrounded him. I suspect he knew, as all wise men gradually learn, that the simple and ordinary have the ability continually to astound. In the middle of the twentieth century blacks would come to learn how many of their brothers and sisters were truly gifted, in a wide and ever expanding venue of disciplines.

What astounds me at this moment in history is that George Washington Carver still has the ability to amaze, inspire, and call forth the best in our imagination. This is what has taken place in Marilyn Nelson's brilliantly lyrical Carver: A Life in Poems. In this volume, one discovers Nelson's use of prayers, lyrics, letters, and an incredible application of place and differing voices. Nelson is able to give the reader vivid and sustained images and photographs of those individuals entering, influencing, and exiting the world of George Washington Carver. This book of poems is successful in suggesting that Professor Carver was and remains a gentleman for all seasons.

Marilyn Nelson richly sculpts out Carver's life, beginning with the moment he and his mother were kidnaped by slavers and John Bentley was hired to rescue them. It is ironic that Bentley was only able to bring the sickly infant George back to the Carvers. Nelson informs us that Bentley:

Tracked the bushwhackers
two days south of here
and caught up with them
down in Arkansas....

He was unable to retrieve the mother. She, most likely, had been sold down South, but the sickly infant, "...a bundle of wet rags, / convulsive with fever and shook / by the whooping cough," was rescued and returned to a grateful Mrs. Carver. For his work, Bentley is given the Carvers' best "filly, as reward." It in turn gave birth to a number of colts that became excellent race horses. Early on it appears as if John Bentley is the greater beneficiary.

In a poem titled "Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife" Susan Carver apostrophizes to the unknown about how they are to rear these two slave boys, and what type of life can they direct them toward. Here are two of her parental questions:

What would you have us make
of them? What
kind of freedom
can we raise them to?

Here we are confronted with the first of many social dilemmas which are to figure in the young Carver's life. Later in this same poem Mrs. Carver is aware of the special nature of the youngest child. She observes not only his scientific understanding of the natural world, but also his artistic perception of that world:

And our little plant-doctor:
Now he's crushing leaves and berries
and painting sanded boards.
Thank you
for his profusion roses
on our bedroom wall,
for his wildflower bouquet
in the sitting room,
his apples and pears beside the stove.

Early in "Watkins Laundry and Apothecary" Nelson again depicts Carver's understanding of nature and science when she allows Mrs. Watkins to tell the reader:

He helped me with my washings,
brought me roots from the woods
that bleached them white folks' sheets
brighter than sunshine.

Carver's abilities quite literally extend far beyond his age. It is a wonder to observe his philosophical and prophetic nature and to be fortunate enough to stand so close to him and in its midst:

He was the child the good Lord gave
and took away before I got more
than a twinkle of a glimpse...
George was holding a black-eyed Susan,
talking about how the seed
this flower grew from
carried a message from flower
that bloomed a million years ago,
and how this flower
would send a message on
to a flower that was going to bloom
in a million years.
Praise Jesus, I'll never forget it.

There is something exceptionally forceful but quiet about the language Nelson employs. It is inventive yet quiet; it is curious yet self-effacing and unassuming as it presents Dr. Carver's life. The poet is able to sum up the scientist's achievements in effortless language that takes into account not only his abilities but also his physical size. "Drifter" is a poem that seems to do it all. It is an early portrait. Here is the miniature "Drifter" in full:

Something says find out
why rain falls, what makes corn so proud
and squash so humble, the questions
call like a train whistle so at fourteen,
fifteen, eighteen, nineteen still on half-fare,
over the receding landscapes the perceiving self
stares back from the darkening window

This poem is based on a number of imperatives which apparently were not only the building blocks of Dr. Carver's life but also an integral part of his nature.

It is a credit to Ms. Nelson's poetic abilities that she is able to interlock these poems both thematically and musically to show us the lyricism involved in one man's life, as well as the tragic stumbling blocks and pitfalls that he had to work to overcome.