My Father's Geography. - book reviews

African American Review, Summer, 1994 by Lenard D. Moore

Like Pinkie Gordon Lane and Gerald Barrax, Michael S. Weaver is a good poet. He doesn't have the years of experience practicing his craft, but that isn't a weakness. He is one of the best new voices on the American literary scene. In his second book of poetry, My Father's Geography, he uses history, family, and place effectively to create subtle poetic compositions to which the reader will wish to return again and again. The book's title is both a welcoming of, and a longing for, a father-son relationship.

In much contemporary poetry, history works only as reportage of past events. But Weaver reveals hidden meanings for the present with his historical references. His observations are poignant, and in the poem "Back from the Arms of Big Mama" he demonstrates his eye for detail: In this room, in this chamber, the sun stands like a woman in an old cotton dress in August shelling peas under maple shade. In this room your great-grandmother, Big Mama, slept away under the eyes of the council of her daughters, who kept a vigil, a deathwatch, rocking back and forth in their chairs, humming unexpected hymns, huddling close together, making room for the angels, seven feet tall in blue pinstripe suits with silver lights for eyes. Your great aunts waited in this room where my mother watched the door in the firmament as these angels walked away with Big Mama. These lines elude banality and sentimentality as they articulate clearly how the speaker feels about the situation.

Weaver's strength is in opening poems with specific locations rather than generalizations. Another fine poem that exhibits this characteristic is "Maple Mountain": In the low lip of the mountain, fresh undergrowth and soft soil like the delicate flesh of a mouth extends from some great head There's much control and originality in these lines, as well as a pleasing music. The persona in the next stanza goes on and makes reference to historical figures: like Nat Tumer's or Solomon's, here we begin the climb, you swatting innocent maple leaves where plastic tunnels small as pencils How delicately these lines incorporate nature, while unfolding in present tense. There are implications of journey throughout the poem: connect from trunk to trunk, down to the gray syrup store on the highway. Somewhere away from us, black bears tear As the poems ends, in a passage too long to quote fully, the journey seems to come to a closure as it turns to a different setting while still in present time: Tiny dots of people cross over to the syrup store, fathers with their sucklings who kick in the gravel, blink at the sun. At the center of Weaver's experience is the little poem, a fine composition in which the speaker mentions home and the distance from it--but this seems to be the unifying force that resonates in the poem. Consider "My Father's Geography" in its entirely: I was parading the Cote d'Azur, hopping the short trains from Nice to Cannes, following the maze of streets in Monte Carlo to the hill that overlooks the ville. A woman fed me pate in the afternoon, calling from her stall to offer me more. At breakfast I talked in French with an old man about what he loved about America--the Kennedys. On the beaches I walked and watched topless women sunbathe and swim, loving both home and being so far from it. At a phone looking to Africa over the Mediterranean, I called my father, and, missing me, he said, "You almost home boy. Go on cross the sea!" Like Jay Wright, Weaver is engaged in Africa and has history and tradition working in his poetry. Also note that "My Father's Geography" displays a sense of freedom that is rare among many of us--if nothing more than psychological. It is evident that Weaver's poetry is grounded in African American culture as he knows and experiences it. Yet this poet also knows how to reel the physical world into his poems, and a rich recall of childhood contributes to the added marvel of his work. My Father's Geography demonstrates in poem after poem that Michael S. Weaver is a gifted poet.

We must be able to feel comfortable with our history, especially if we want to know in what direction our lives are headed. Outside of our families, it is the homeplace and its landscape that appeal to us most. Pinkie Gordon Lane, Gerald Barrax, and Michael S. Weaver are talented poets who speak eloquently, sincerely, and directly of the people and the conditions that make them into who they are. As long as language lives, so will their poetry, which mirrors themselves.