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The Homeplace: Poems
Finalist for the 1991 National Book Award
In The Homeplace, the stories of a family become the history of a people as Marilyn Nelson Waniek sketches the lives descended from her great-great-grandmother Diverne.
The poet’s mother, Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, inspired this volume when she bequeathed to Waniek from her deathbed the tales that had shaped her life. The first section of the book presents those stories transformed into graceful, humorous, and deeply touching poems.
In the book’s second section Waniek honors her late father, Melvin Nelson, and tells the story of his “family”: the fabled group of black World War II aviators known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Using the language and perspective of her father and his comrades, Waniek explores through a few of their individual stories the hardships and achievements of the thousand black flyers trained at Tuskegee Institute.
Throughout The Homeplace, the reader is involved in a series of sharply portrayed lives. By telling a continuous story in a mix of free verse and traditional forms, Waniek gives her work pace and intensity. She handles the villanelle, the sonnet, and the popular ballad with equal skill and gusto.
“I just knew we were going to live some history,” Johnnie Nelson said at the end of her life. Her daughter has produced an eloquent homage to that history, celebrating the survival of Afro-American pride.
In The Homeplace, the stories of a family become the history of a people as Marilyn Nelson Waniek sketches the lives descended from her great-great-grandmother Diverne.
The poet’s mother, Johnnie Mitchell Nelson, inspired this volume when she bequeathed to Waniek from her deathbed the tales that had shaped her life. The first section of the book presents those stories transformed into graceful, humorous, and deeply touching poems.
In the book’s second section Waniek honors her late father, Melvin Nelson, and tells the story of his “family”: the fabled group of black World War II aviators known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Using the language and perspective of her father and his comrades, Waniek explores through a few of their individual stories the hardships and achievements of the thousand black flyers trained at Tuskegee Institute.
Throughout The Homeplace, the reader is involved in a series of sharply portrayed lives. By telling a continuous story in a mix of free verse and traditional forms, Waniek gives her work pace and intensity. She handles the villanelle, the sonnet, and the popular ballad with equal skill and gusto.
“I just knew we were going to live some history,” Johnnie Nelson said at the end of her life. Her daughter has produced an eloquent homage to that history, celebrating the survival of Afro-American pride.
- GenresPoetry
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
About the author
Marilyn Nelson
61 books159 followersMarilyn Nelson is the author of many acclaimed books for young people and adults, including CARVER: A LIFE IN POEMS, a Newbery Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Honor Book, and A WREATH FOR EMMETT TILL, a Printz Honor Book and Coretta Scott King Honor Book. She also translated THE LADDER, a picture book by Halfdan Rasmussen. She lives in East Haddam, Connecticut.
For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/marilyn-...
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 31, 2026
Thinking about writing this review of The Homeplace re-boots the cold explosion in my self.
Honestly, there was turmoil in this reading.
Marilyn Nelson Waniek is a respected black poet. I’m an old white guy who writes and cares about poetry.
I don’t read much poetry by other writers that appeals to me. This doesn’t make me special. I think it’s an ordinary experience.
When I say that much of Marilyn Nelson’s work doesn’t appeal to me, that doesn’t signify much of anything out of the ordinary.
When I say that some of the poems wrap their hands around my throat and squeeze directly through to my soul, it signifies exactly what those words mean.
It’s not “black poetry,” let’s get that straight. That term necessarily implies that there is “white poetry.” I think there are ways to characterize poetry, but the demeaning simplicity of “black poetry” or “white poetry” isn’t acceptable. I think it’s not possible. Poetry is personal, and it doesn’t have a skin color.
Here’s an excerpt from The Homeplace:
These are words from “Chosen,” an understated account of a white Southern master and Diverne, a young black woman who is his slave, and Pomp, their son.
“Diverne wanted to die, that August night
his face hung over hers, a sweating moon.
She wished so hard, she killed part of her heart
…And the man who came
out of a twelve-room house and ran to her
close shack across three yards that night, to leap
onto her cornshuck pallet. Pomp was their
share of the future. And it wasn’t rape.
In spite of her raw terror. And his whip.”
I’d like to say I think I want to walk a mile in Marilyn Nelson’s shoes. Maybe I was able to trudge a few steps when I read her poems.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
Honestly, there was turmoil in this reading.
Marilyn Nelson Waniek is a respected black poet. I’m an old white guy who writes and cares about poetry.
I don’t read much poetry by other writers that appeals to me. This doesn’t make me special. I think it’s an ordinary experience.
When I say that much of Marilyn Nelson’s work doesn’t appeal to me, that doesn’t signify much of anything out of the ordinary.
When I say that some of the poems wrap their hands around my throat and squeeze directly through to my soul, it signifies exactly what those words mean.
It’s not “black poetry,” let’s get that straight. That term necessarily implies that there is “white poetry.” I think there are ways to characterize poetry, but the demeaning simplicity of “black poetry” or “white poetry” isn’t acceptable. I think it’s not possible. Poetry is personal, and it doesn’t have a skin color.
Here’s an excerpt from The Homeplace:
These are words from “Chosen,” an understated account of a white Southern master and Diverne, a young black woman who is his slave, and Pomp, their son.
“Diverne wanted to die, that August night
his face hung over hers, a sweating moon.
She wished so hard, she killed part of her heart
…And the man who came
out of a twelve-room house and ran to her
close shack across three yards that night, to leap
onto her cornshuck pallet. Pomp was their
share of the future. And it wasn’t rape.
In spite of her raw terror. And his whip.”
I’d like to say I think I want to walk a mile in Marilyn Nelson’s shoes. Maybe I was able to trudge a few steps when I read her poems.
Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
www.richardsubber.com
June 18, 2023
In colorful language tinged with humor, emotion, and innuendo, the poet tells the story of generations of her black and mixed family members. She portrays the black experience of living, loving, raising children, and protecting them in an often hostile, often manipulative white society. I enjoyed her playful experimenting with forms, her precise descriptions, and her perfectly realized use of dialogue. And some masterful metaphors such as this one: "She honed his body's yearnings to a keen, sharp point."
March 13, 2026
The family photographs interspersed among Marilyn Nelson' s beautiful poems add an additional window into the soul of a Black family in the south after the civil war. It is real in a way that is haunting and life-giving at the same time. The poems are works of truth. This kind of delivery of this particular history is rare. A treasure. The poem "Daughters, 1900" is included in a recent (2025) anthology and that is what alerted me to the existence of this collection (1990). I am grateful I was able to track it down.
January 8, 2019
Inspiring and gorgeous. Marilyn Nelson traces 4 generations of her family through poetry, from slavery to the desegregation of the military, dividing her slim volume into generations. Equal parts optimistic and gut-wrenching, she utilizes different kinds and lengths of poetry like the master she is. Makes me want to write one on my own family...but not as well... She is a treasure.
February 11, 2025
This is the 3rd very short book of narrative poetry by Marilyn Nelson that I've read. Taken as a whole, these poems tell the story of Nelson's mother's family from c. 1860 enslavement to 1960. Several of the final poems are about her father, one of the original WW2 Tuskegee airmen. She does an amazing job of giving a picture of people and lives in just a few well chosen words.
May 20, 2020
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Waniek's genius is less in specific turns of phrase, and more in the poetic architecture of the whole collection, a family history told in individual poems. I've never read anything like it.
February 26, 2014
This slender volume of finely crafted poems is divided in two parts: the first part consists of poems that describe the author's lineage and history, complete with pictures. The second part is devoted to poems honoring the Tuskegee airmen, the first black military air force unit of which her father was one. The poems are tightly crafted and powerful. For folks used to reading other types of poetry, this book is a real treat, both in the form and the content.
March 19, 2014
wonderful powerful poetry
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews