Black Bell

by Alison C. Rollins

Sweeping from the eighteenth century to futurist fabulations, Black Bell harmonizes poetry with performance art practices in an investigation of fugitivity. Inspired by the nineteenth century image of an enslaved woman wearing iron horns and bells, Alison C. Rollins’s Black Bell continues an exploration of cataloging individual experience and collective memory. As Rollins sets out to resuscitate and embody the archive, we see a chorus of historical figures like Eliza Harris, Henry “Box” Brown, and Lear Green; readers can listen in as Phillis Wheatley takes a Turing test or venture through Dante’s Inferno remixed with Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers . Poems travel across time and space, between the eighteenth century and futuristic fabulations, vibrating with fugitive frequencies, sounds of survival, and nerve-wracking notes tuned toward love and liberation. Black Bell navigates what it means to be both invisible and spectacle, hidden and on display, allowing lyric language to become the material for fashioning wearable sculptures akin to Nick Cave’s “soundsuits.” Integrating performance art practices, metalwork, and sonic, Black Bell becomes multimedia meditation on freedom seeking, furthering the possibilities of both the page and the canvas of the poet’s body.

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

Published April 23, 2024

Reviews

[Kay E. Bancroft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alison C. Rollins has truly created something incredible with this collection – not only is it an archive, it’s a reframing of the archive that is so important. I’m grateful for the research and love and time she clearly devoted to this book, because it shows. It’s formally challenging, alongside the offen difficult subject matter, and it allows readers to learn and expand their minds in new ways. I am absolutely blown away by the formal and visual choices, the language, the history. Please read this book – we all need it.

[Jeff Morgan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black Bell is a collection of poems about escape/liberation/freedom by queer black poet, Alison C. Rollins. She uses the image of a bell, based on a device made of bells worn by an enslaved woman to prevent her from escaping.

Formally, this is very challenging poetry. Rollins uses classical forms, modern forms, and some totally original forms (apparently throwing two dozen words on a page that are only related because they share the same first letter counts as poetry). She also mixes in performance art and includes something akin to stage directions in a drama. At one point she asks the audience to cut out the poems, place them in small envelopes, and write emotions on them.

Content-wise, these poems are challenging as well. While it’s clear that all of the poems relate to the theme of escape/liberation/freedom, they are often enigmatic and esoteric, if not downright vague (not exactly my favorite style of poetry). Rollins fills these poems with allusions. She is as comfortable with classic poets (Dante, Spenser, Shakespeare, Eliot) as she is with contemporary poets (Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong) as she is with black musicians (Sun Ra, Stevie Wonder, Wu-Tang, Outkast, Ghostface Killah) as she is with historical figures (Henry Box Brown, Dred Scott, Ellen and William Craft). You almost need a degree in black history to pick up all of the subtle allusions.

While I appreciate the research, the artistry, and the craft, not many of these poems resonated with me personally. If I had to pick favorites, the poems about the seven deadly sins near the end of the collection were my favorites. Here’s a sampling:

Gluttony
I got beans, greens, potatoes, tomatoes,
lamb, ham, chicken, duck. You name it.
I know better than to fix a to-go plate.
The takeaway is, there are no leftovers

if we all got a seat at god's table.
Mac and cheese, catfish, cornbread,
so much hot sauce the sunset drips.
Big Momma cooks in god's kitchen.

Diabetes means she sits at the right
hand of the father. Lick-your-lips rib tips,
oxtails, grits, gumbo, black-eyed peas,
hoecakes, and sweet potato pie.

Any grandma worth her salt has worn
out her knees in prayer, in hopes that
scraps be nourishment to our bodies.
Do you know what it is to go without?

[Mara]

Favorite poem in this collection is “Topography of Silence.”

Wu-Tang references on page 37 and 113, Jell-O on page 88

“I know what I have said.
I do not know what you have heard.” (p.15)

“Constraint makes
possible a kind of freedom.” (p.19)

“To be human is to be
homeless, the furthest
removed from grandeur.” (p.55)

“I learned the sun does not owe
me a single thing, that I am what
I take for granted.” (p.66)

“every sin I have
committed has been an act of
self-love” (p.114)

[DeeSoul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I wish I had while writing The Laughing Barrel. This collection, inspired by another artifact of antebellum America, takes us to the edge of language & then dares us to consider what language alone cannot convey. It is as playful with diction as Bob Kaufman, percussive as
Patricia Smith, and so delightfully experimental. I appreciate its explicit relation of writing to performance. A new North Star for me.

[indigo]

im not even gonna rate it bc this book sits at that intersection of academic prestige and black intellectualism anything I do is gonna be called racist or tone deaf but honestly I felt it was sooooo gimmicky and I also watched the harvard talk she gave wearing that bell and I just like I dont know I dont like this kind of self obsessed tracing of history in any lineage or culture. there's not enough humility for me to digest it it doesn't feel honest enough. sorry not sorry

[Sierra · Rating 5 out of 5]

#TheSealeyChallenge2024

This book is beyond words. It really made me think about the possibility of artform when it comes to poetry. There are so many surprises from the illustrations, historical references, actual print for newspapers during slavery, and references that only WE would catch. This was a lot to chew. I'll be back again for this and other work from Alison C.Rollins.

[Shawn Aebi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful, albeit at times cryptic, collection focusing on the shackles black women have been forced to wear for centuries, sometimes literally. The cadence with Henry "Box" Brown my favorite.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inventive and exciting.

[Elena Macdonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

a lovely collection, deeply informed by history and pop culture.

[Diana Arterian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wrote a rave review in LARB for this incredible book. An excerpt: "A librarian as well as a poet, both callings that invite curiosity, Rollins opens door after door after door in these poems with the hope that the reader will step through. While her outstanding first collection Library of Small Catastrophes (2019) similarly considers historical figures, the personal, and the archive, Black Bell is undeniably more ambitious and capacious."

Read it here: https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/h...