The Fields of Praise: New and Selected Poems

by Marilyn Nelson

In The Fields of Praise, Marilyn Nelson claims as subjects the life of the spirit, the vicissitudes of love, and the African American experience and arranges them as white pebbles marking our common journey toward a “monstrous love / that wants to make the world right.”

Nelson is a poet of stunning power, able to bring alive the most rarified and subtle of experiences. A slave destined to become a minister preaches sermons of heartrending eloquence and wisdom to a mule. An old woman scrubbing over a washtub receives a personal revelation of what Emancipation “So this is the peace of hours like these.” Memories of the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen in the face of aerial combat abroad and virulent racism at home bring a speaker to the sudden awareness of herself as the daughter “of a thousand proud fathers.”

Whether evoking spiritual longing or a return to the wedding at Cana, Nelson renders the interior landscape of all her speakers with absolute precision. This is a beautiful collection indeed, and readers will come away from The Fields of Praise with a reawakened appreciation for life’s minor miracles, one of them being the power of the word.

Genres: Poetry, College

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Marilyn 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-...

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of poems in here I liked or that spoke to me in some way. Nelson discussed many of these on the On Being radio interview with Krista Tippett (aired 2/23/2017). Some favorites:

poems of motherhood:
My Second Birth
The Lost Daughter
Bali Hai Calls Mama
Levitation with Baby (the Muse calls - what mother must do to prepare to work)

poems of the Tuskegee Airmen:
Light Under the Door (childhood fear relieved by father's arrival)
I Imagine Driving Across Country (family trip creating family)
Freeman Field (German POWs)
Lonely Eagles (read by Nelson in the On Being interview)
Porter

two poems about dreams:
Recurrent Dream (father came back)
The Dream's Wisdom (Mama came back)

Churchgoing: "We sing a spiritual as the last song, and we are moved by a peculiar grace that settles a new aura on the place." Is this Nelson's introduction of her idea of "communal pondering" discussed with Tippett?
How I Discovered Poetry (painful story of school experience)
To Market (sad story from family history)
Hurrah, Hurrah: "A black man in France wasn't the same as a black man at home."

the Abba Jacob poems. Abba Jacob is the hermit monk in Nelson's 2012 children's book Snook Alone. Here are excerpts from three poems:
Clown Nose ["Everyone gets that call"; how must the call be answered?]:
The solitary life can be difficult.
Each of them insisted he felt called,
and I'm sure they were.
But the call isn't to a specific life:
It's to the Absolute.
Everyone gets that call.
Answering it doesn't mean
you have to renounce the world
and live on one bean a day.
All you have to do
is seek to see clearly, to see reality.
And the ultimate reality, of course,
is God.

The Simple Wisdom [discussed with Tippett the difference between mentalities of magic and alliance]:
Abba Jacob said:
There's a big difference between
the mentalities of magic and of alliance.
People who spend their lives searching for God
have a magical mentality: They need a sign, a proof,
a puff of smoke, an irrefutable miracle.
People who have an alliance mentality
know God by loving.

May Your Love Convert Lucifer
[Satan's] power was broken
by Christ's great gifts of love and life,
and he was created good and beautiful,
and God still loves him.
Why, then, should we hate him?
So I pray for him once in a while,
when I think of it.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first half of this 200 page book (would have given it 4 stars), which dealt with the experiences of motherhood and brought to life Nelson's ancestors. I was thoroughly enjoying the personalities and lives she was celebrating.

But in the second half of the book she is obsessed with religious feeling and seems infatuated with a figure called Abba Jacob. I did not end up infatuated with him but found him and her admiration of what he says tiresome. Some later poems focus on evil. There were two poems in the this section I enjoyed. One was a rendering of the story of Jonah in a humorous voice. The other was the very last poem which tells of an act of contrition by a racist redneck.

I am not a religious person, which I'm sure affected my response to the poems in the second half of the book. Others might enjoy the Abba Jacob poems. This second half wrestles with divine love--union with god and attempts at unconditional love toward humanity in general.

I also should mention Nelson's use of form. I recall a couple of ballads, one villanelle, some bluesy moments and many sonnets, including a well-done crown of sonnets ("Thus Far By Faith") about an Uncle Warren, who started out preaching to mules and eventually ended up founding a church because the racists banned people of color from their church. This also had religious subject matter but I found it thoroughly enjoyable.

I would look at another of her books but would scan it first to gauge the number of religious poems in it. In my opinion, she is at her best reviving history and celebrating the lives of ordinary people, none of whom are ordinary when she renders them. She's excellent at conjuring voices, which brings both Uncle Warren and Jonah to life.

At the end of the book, Nelson provides notes on some of the poems that are helpful. One tells that the poem was written for a couple who purchased her "poem-writing service" at a church auction for $73. Kudos to her for thinking to offer such a service and kudos to the couple who thought to purchase it!

[Phobean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. I had to renew this book from the library three times and receive three or more overdue notices before I completed it, despite the book's outward appearance of being "average" length. Marilyn Nelson goes deep. There were many, many, many gems and lot that's very funny, but the two poems struck me hardest. "Churchgoing (after Philip Larkin)", which includes a stanza that awoke my inner bitter (and secretively) agnostic: "I sit alone, tormented in my heart / by fighting angels, one group black, one white. / The victory is uncertain, but tonight / I'll lie awake again, and try to start / finding the black way back to what we've lost." And "Dusting": "Thank you for these tiny / particles of ocean salt / pearl-necklace viruses, / winged protozoans / for the infinite, / intricate shapes / of submicroscopic / living things" --a poem perfect in its exquisitely specific detail that I could feel, like running my fingertips across lace. The final poem, Minor Miracle, is 💣 💥.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading. Marilyn Nelson's poetry has a broader range than almost any poet I could name, with work that illuminates the unseen corners of Jim Crow and the untold human faces of the slave era, the lives of Black Air Force pilots, and which tells the tale of Biblical Jonah in the person of Mississippi John Hurt. These poems are rooted in the earth but reach far into the sky and beyond, into metaphysical and spiritual turns and digressions that illuminate the reader like stars and celestial bodies on the darkest night. In a world where the New Yorker magazine celebrates the inanity of travel poems that require the inclusion of the word "light," Marilyn Nelson, extolled though she is, goes criminally unrecognized in comparison to pithy so called luminaries like Billy Collins. Do yourself a favor and read this book. Savor these poems. Parcel yourself out one a day, for these dark days we are entering.

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Nelson's poem The Ballad of Aunt Geneva years ago in an anthology, and loved it so much I memorized it, and only now got around to buying a collection of her poems to read more of her work.

Aunt Geneva is a brilliant poem, funny and earthy and sad all at once, and not at all representative of her work in general. Which is not a criticism. These were stupendous, amazing poems. She writes about motherhood and relationships brilliantly, but my favourite poems were the large numbers concerned with the evils that people do (particularly violent anti-black racism in America) and the difficulty of maintaining hope and practicing love in the face of that.

Well worth reading for anyone who feels despair about our current cultural moment.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
I think I would have preferred reading the poems in the original collections they were pulled from. That being said, a number of the poems in this collection stopped me in my tracks. One of my favorite things about Nelson is her explanation of certain poems at the end of the text. She didn't provide an explanation for all the poems included, but I like knowing the inspiration behind a piece. I wish more poets would do that. After you're done reading you can read the notes at the end and then revisit the piece with a different frame of reference.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept getting her confused with Marilyn Hacker, but I'm glad I finally set the record straight. Nelson gives her free verse real freedom without letting the narrative veer off course. I especially appreciate her use of history (with the Tuskegee Airmen). I also like her tongue-in-cheek poems about everyday life (her marriage, motherhood, etc.). She's got humor. She's got praise. She's got a sense of honor and irony. She's a keeper.

[Sandra Pyeatt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVE these poems that range from family to history to spiritual explorations of good and evil. Nelson is such a skilled poet and beautiful thinker. As a white woman, I greatly valued the opportunity to read a black woman poet and glimpse a little of the world from her perspective.

[Fawn]

my mother wrote this!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am always reading this book

[Amy Kitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nelson's poems are strong and rooted in a bluesy passion. It feels as if her poems are a family tale she is sharing with the reader.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very strong voice that slid repeatedly into Biblical and mythological allegories. (Not my scene.) Too bad the date wasn't fun enough for a second.

[Sonia Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

i shall read all the words of Marilyn Nelson.
Love

[Chris Kostenko · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every mother ought to read selections from this book, Actually, as a father I found it thought provoking. Marilyn Nelson is thought provoking.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did I actually finish this book? No. Am I still marking it as read? Duh, have you seen how far behind I am on my reading challenge?

[C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Fields of Praise poetry collection had some really great moments in it. And I was enjoying it. I think this is the fourth book I've read by this author. That being said, I don't desire to read about ghosts, witches, rape, horrific murder, or negative spiritual things that make me uncomfortable.

I skipped a few areas in several poems and proceeded to finish the collection. I have no clue what the point is of this last chapter? In the last 10-15 minutes of this book, she just takes it to a whole new level of vileness and evil that I just have no desire to read. She's a brilliant writer's I just don't have any desire to put pure evil into my brain. It started to feel like a horror story on the evening news. 3.5 stars round up

[John Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection, particularly the Abba Jacob poems and those reflecting on human horrors.

[Willy Akhdes · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's a prose poems. I expected too much. But, it's okay.