Woman Talking Woman, Maxine Tynes

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language: English
country: Canada
year: 1990
form: poetry
dates read: 25.1.24-27.1.24

I don’t know that I can give a better review of Maxine Tynes’s poetry/short fiction collection Woman Talking Woman than you’d get by just reading the poems from it that I’ve posted over the past few days. not all of the poems in the collection are perfect, but the best poems in the book are incredible and far outweigh the poems that don’t work as well.

the collection is divided into four parts:

1. “Woman Talking Woman”, a mix of commemorative poems (like “For the Montreal Fourteen”, about the École Polytechnique massacre), nature poems (a fun little series of poems about crows), and poems on mostly personal subjects (mainly romantic relationships).
2. “Black Song Nova Scotia”, a series of reflections on racism and Black community in Nova Scotia (most notably a triptych on Africville), plus a poem musing on the possibility that one of Tynes’s ancestors may have been Mi'kmaw.
3. “The Portrait Poems”, six poems musing on the process of having her portrait painted by Rosemary McDonald (used as the cover art for the collection) and seeing herself from the outside in this stylized way.
4. “Stories”, three short stories — one a moment form childhood; one a fictionalized version of an episode in the life of Portia White, the first internationally-recognized Black Canadian concert singer; and one about a poet dealing with the odd experience of (local) fame.

the highlights for me were the personal poems in part I and the Africville poems in part II, but throughout the collection, as in her first collection, Borrowed Beauty, which I read in 2021, there are some incredible collocations and constructions. a few highlights:

To etch Africville into the Past, the Present, and relentlessly
into the Future.

(from “Africville Is My Name”)

I watched my little sisters listen
for the phone to ring and ring and
ring for me,
with some George or Mike or Glenn;
waiting for some-man-on-the-line
future rings of their own.

(from “All the Sisters”)

as you gauge, in turn
my humour
my candour
my wit
and my judgmental self
I stand hopeful and afraid, and
move over
and over and over your threshold
as the book begins
as you read me now.

(from “As the Book Begins”)

[Unamuno alarm bells ringing]

anyway. the point is, if you have access to any of her poetry, do yourself a favor and give it a try!

moods: emotional

webring >:-]
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