Blue-Tail Fly

by Vievee Francis

The title of Blue-Tail Fly comes from an antebellum song commonly known as "Jimmy Crack Corn." The blue-tail fly is a supposedly insignificant creature that bites the horse that bucks and kills the master. In this collection, poet Vievee Francis gives voice to "outsiders"―from soldiers and common folk to leading political figures―who play the role of the blue-tail fly in the period of American history between the Mexican American War and the Civil War. Through a diverse range of styles, characters, and emotions, Francis's poems consider the demands of war, protest and resistance to it, and the cross-cultural exchanges of wartime.

More than a narrowly themed text, Blue-Tail Fly is a book of balances, weighing the give-and-take of people and cultures in the arena of war. For lovers of poetry and those interested in American history, Blue-Tail Fly will illustrate the complexities of the American past and future.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2006

About the author

Vievee Francis is author of Horse in the Dark (2012), winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2010 and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. She was the recipient of the 2009 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and the 2010 Kresge Artist Fellowship. A Cave Canem Fellow, she is currently an associate editor for Callaloo.

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blue-Tail Fly may be Ms. Francis' first published collection of poetry, but she's no novice. A well known Detroit poet, Ms. Francis has read her works widely, and published poetry in several
respected journals, over the years.

This exquisite offering from the poetess is a collection of poems centered around the Civil War. The title, "Blue-Tail Fly", refers to an antebellum song now best remembered as the tune "Jimmy Crack
Corn". The song's lyric story is thought to be told from the viewpoint of a slave celebrating his master's untimely death. In the poems of Blue-Tail Fly, Ms. Francis draws from historical letters
and facts, imagining the voices of both real and composite Civil War era figures, to form narratives - or portraits - of their lives and times. Each poem seems like the snapshot of a moment; each
poem's subject as whole as a scene from a play or character in a novel. Using poetic license, Ms. Francis leads her readers into the courage and fear of wartime, wherein we imagine such things as
the uncertainty of slave life; and, even, what it was like to love across color lines in a dangerous time.

Through Blue-Tail Fly, we meet and come to care about soldiers, drummer boys, lovers, slaves... We learn a little more about those who followed orders, and those who gave them - either by will of
man or brute force. How wonderful it is to have this lushly drawn poetic portrait made up of such disparate historical voices. The Civil War, in all its multi-layered complexity, comes alive in
Blue-Tail Fly. This is poetry that is not only 'writerly' in its execution, but meaningful and worthwhile in its reading. Truly a triumphant first effort.

[D'Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is great. It's by Vievee Francis who will be joining the MFA program at the University of Michigan in the fall - so check it out. She's fabulous.

[Eunice Chung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually don't like poetry, but this one was illuminating. Met the author and she was as sweet as McDonalds iced tea.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved these poems. One of the most fascinating things was how much I learned about history - on the ground history, by reading these poems. It moves history out of the history books and onto the pages of our lives. She writes here - through the intersection, mainly, of the Civil War, about ethnicity and nation and justice. It is beautiful and clear. It makes me think about how to communicate this clearly these ideas and experiences.

[Rabid_xx_Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I’m supposed to like this more than I do because of the subject matter. Eh… Meh. Nawww! Guess you’ll just have to get after me with your musket if you disagree.

[Phire Free · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry is moving and thoughtful. I enjoy the thoughtful use of variety. This has been a lovely poetic experience.

[Patty Pieczka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vievee Francis takes her readers on a journey down cobbled roads and dirt paths of the past, successfully transporting us to the days from slavery to manumission and the immense hardships of the Civil War era. She breathed life into simpler yet conflicted times, resurrecting the authenticity of attitudes in language which echoed through to the present. Her all-encompassing choir of voices captures personas from slave to politician, soldier to mother, none of whom were left untouched by the volatile events of the day.
Francis presents arguments and motivations from both sides of war. She details pro-war sentiments in "Ample Cause of War," written from the point of view of President Polk, and "Gen. Taylor Convinces Himself That He is for War." Non-violent desires are expressed in the plea for protests against atrocities in "Frederick Douglass Speaks before the Anti-Mexican War Abolitionists."
One of the most compelling works is "The Binding Tie," a series of 7 sonnets inspired by stories told to the author by her grandmother depicting actual recollections of her great great grandmother, and ex-slave who illegally married an Irishman. The couple fled Mississippi for the forests of Eastern Texas, and the poems are a call and response between Callie's point of view and Andrew's. The following lines explore a sense of Callie's newfound freedom within her relationship to Andrew, illustrating a stark contrast between forced possession of a woman in bondage to the willing possession of a wife in love.
The title of the collection, Blue-Tail Fly, comes from an old slave song of the same name, or Jimmy Crack Corn. The metaphor of the blue-tail fly who ultimately killed the master represents a David and Goliath scenario, the overtaking of the strong and powerful by the weak and the small.
Using homespun dialect, Francis effectively re-creates the scenes of apprehension prevalent in those turbulent days. She reaches beyond stereotype and folklore to pluck honesty of emotion from each of her speakers, allowing the reader an intimate look into the secret pain and fear that dwells within each one.
The author's talent for phrasing is evident in her tribute to poetry, included as a self or the wounded in "Walt Whitman Reads to the Limbless, Dying." Francis applies her love of words to ease pain and heal distress. The plea of the wounded to Whitman mirrors the desire of the reader for more of Francis' words in the final line of this poem, "Write for me."