MACNOLIA: Poems

by A. Van Jordan

"Jordan is a wizard at capturing vernacular in both conventional forms and his own invention." --Black Issues Book Review

In 1936, teenager MacNolia Cox became the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition. Supposedly prevented from winning, the precocious child who dreamed of becoming a doctor was changed irrevocably. Her story, told in a poignant nonlinear narrative, illustrates the power of a pivotal moment in a life.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Race, College, Read For School

144 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2004

Reviews

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

MacNolia by A. Van Jordan is a wonderful poetry collection worth reading many times. It reads like a novel because the author provides a fairly integrated story imagined by Jordan but based on a real life event. He doles out the background information in hints and pieces from several viewpoints throughout this poetry collection in an atmospheric and non-linear fashion. The writing is creative and inventive and Jordan uses a number of poetry styles – the long form we frequently see, dictionary definitions infused with rich details and musings, words presented in graphic and stylized layouts, clippings from magazine and newspaper articles, possibly printed verbatim but more likely re-imagined from the original…..and more.

The author, A. Van Jordan, based MacNolia on a real life event – a black 13 year old girl named MacNolia Cox. She was a straight A student with aspirations of becoming a doctor, who won 1st place in an Akron, Ohio spelling bee contest and advanced to the Ohio State’s spelling bee championship. She studied the 100,000 potential words diligently and dreamt of winning the contest. In the 1930’s a black person winning an intellectual contest was unthinkable. What happened? A white judge allegedly stopped MacNolia from winning by posing a word not included in the potential repertoire of 100,000 words. The word not listed and spelt incorrectly by MacNolia was ironically “nemesis.” As a result, MacNolia lost (finished fifth) and her dreams were dashed. That one instant and one singular event squashed any dreams she had about rising higher than her expected status. Instead of becoming a doctor, MacNolia became the housekeeper, cleaner and/or maid for a white doctor in her home town.

A. Van Jordan came across this story when perusing information on the history of Ohio in 1920’s and 1930’s. The collection he’s written about these happenings is simply amazing. He uses the history, starting with MacNolia’s obituary, to weave a microcosm of the black experience in northern USA; in particular the black female experience. While writing from MacNolia’s imagined individual experience, Jordan expresses the collective experiences of most black citizens in North America. The overall mood of repression, lack of hope, poverty, servitude is almost overwhelming. At times, I felt as if I had been bullied into submission and the hopelessness felt very much in my face.

We read excerpts from the point of view of MacNolia’s husband John, her mother Alberta and from all kinds of sources – printed material, music and entertainment news and some of the richest are MacNolia’s innermost thoughts about her life’s experiences, the conception and birth of her son and his growing up, her husband’s love, job loss and infidelity, her mother’s influence, her father’s absence, her expectations of herself and of those of her community, so hard for a 13 year old to shoulder on her own.

My favourite Poems were: "I’m Trying" from the perspective of MacNolia’s husband John p. 52, "To" in a Dictionary Format from the perspective of her MacNolia’s mother Mrs. Alberta Cox p. 80 and "My One White Friend" from the perspective of MacNolia p. 120. However, it’s important to state that I think the sum of the poems is most impactful because of each single poem and thought that has been included in the total package. The collection begs to be read again and again; in order to fully empathize and comprehend the individual and collective black experience as presented in Jordan’s masterful and creative style with words.

Jordan’s writing is moving, all-encompassing, heart-wrenching and so real. It felt like I was reading about the feelings and emotions of all black people who have been suppressed, practically suffocated and not allowed to live up to even a few ounces of their potential. So sad and such a great way to let everyone know of the damage that’s been done and the unfair hardships, stifling and degradation that black people have been forced to endure. It’s an excellent and moving collection that should convince readers it’s time for a change and for apologies.

4 1/2 stars. Goodreads 4 stars.

[Willow Redd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book that I purchased for a poetry writing class that we then never bothered to reference or read, so it's been sitting in my "to read" pile for a number of years, tucked away in a storage bin that I'm finally going through.

It certainly is an interesting piece, all the works included revolve around the life and times of MacNolia Cox, a young black girl who won her local, state-wide spelling bee, only to be sucker punched by the white judge at the National Bee, giving her a word that was not on the approved list and breaking her spirit. The entries do not follow any exact time frame, jumping around to different points in her life. In fact, most of the information regarding her spelling champ days isn't until the end of the book, though it was a much earlier part of her life.

Several poems in this collection are written in a hybrid screenplay form, making them very visually striking. There are also poems in the form of dictionary entries and those written in more long form style.

One of my favorite works in this book is "The Night Richard Pryor Met Mudbone," an amazing poem that details the moment Richard Pryor went from a decent comic mimicking Bill Cosby to the Pryor who would be considered a comedy trailblazer. It's such a powerful piece. I love it.

[Jolene · Rating 2 out of 5]

MacNolia Cox's story is devastating. But I didn't FEEL it in this collection as powerfully as I did while reading Claudia Rankine's Citizen: An American Lyric or Yrsa Daley-Ward's Bone. I wish I had read more about MacNolia's story and the structure of the book before I had read it: According to A. Van Jordan, he tells the story in reverse chronological order so that its progression "is one of transcendence." I kind of feel like I should go back and reread it right away.

First line: "The melody seeps through her room / Like a bad man's walk, something sexy / In one step, something sinister / In the other."

[Adelaide Rosene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sorry to A Van Jordan for the 3, some of these poems are amazing and MacNolia’s story is heartbreaking. I just got lost in the sauce and the narrative was anticlimactic to me. My favorite poems were the dictionary preposition poems, like TO: … “b. toward: and you turned toward me, and I told you the heavy truth: you’ll get through this life on your spelling, not your smile: on your math, not your legs; on the sciences of life, not your sex. And this, my dear, is when you were born a woman. 2a Reaching as far: Then I didn’t feel like a mother. I looked into your eyes: water was clear to the bottom, the loose steel that hardens us from girlhood through woman goodness already damn near to the base of your skull.” (80).

[Tory · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was an immersive experience reading this set of poems that is also a narrative about MacNolia Cox, an African-American girl who almost won the National Spelling Bee in 1936 (but was rumored to have been set up by the judges to fail). I've never read anything like it.

[Kassy Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply stunning! Van Jordan takes the historical event of a young, African-American girl who won the Akron spelling bee in the 1930's and uses it as a frame to talk about love, kinship, language, and American history. The book makes use of traditional forms like a sestina that feel fresh and contemporary. Van Jordan's poems and project are both artful and complex. At times I was on the verge of tears and at others about to laugh at the bitter irony of what it means to be a successful young black woman in America in the twentieth century, working twice as hard in a game that is ultimately rigged in the favor of white people.

[Michelle Bibliovino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watching the art of poetry alight on the page, transform on the turning, invent itself at each break, is like watching the formation of the universe at the Big Bang. Jordan takes this true story, a heartbreaking tale of triumph and loss, and stretches it like taffy over as many structures as he can, giving us an opus, a mural, a film, even a recipe that exposes the rancor of racial injustice that blights our nation. Powerful and evocative. A treat.

[Aprel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have difficulty getting into poetry. But this book....engrossing from the beginning. Excellent book of poems - perfect way to depict this woman’s life. The poems were so expressive and moving. Definitely recommend it for those who can’t seem to get into poems because in this case all of them together are used to tell a story.

[Thea Barzditis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though some of its narrative ambitions didn't quite play out to their fullest extent, this book achieves emotional (and craft-based) excellence more often than not. Jordan does a great service in his effort to immortalize and emphasize the life and struggles of MacNolia Cox.

[thefriendlybibliophile · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this poetry book for my Intro to Creative Writing class and I loved it!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful

[Kane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nemesis n-e-m-e-s-i-s

[Ali🌀 · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it

[Diana Eberhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking story of racism ruining a child’s dreams, told in a variety of forms.

[Paula Koneazny · Rating 4 out of 5]

MACNOLIA engaged me as a hybrid piece, more a novel comprised of poems than a book of stand-alone poems (and therein lies its strength, I think). As in Lyrae Van Clief-Stephanon’s Black Swan, Van Jordan’s poems come together to form a coherent and interesting whole greater than the sum of its parts. Van Jordan takes his project up a notch by playing around to a certain extent with form (I hate to use “experimental” in relation to poetry, since I think it has become almost meaningless). His approach to putting words on the page is quite varied, moving from left justified stanzas to prose blocks to double-spaced lines to a poem, “Dust,” that incorporates gaps of white space (“exploded” form). None of this is new or radical in contemporary poetry, of course, but its hybrid nature saves MACNOLIA from getting mired in a narrative which is essentially coherent and accessible to the reader (not to say that Van Jordan “tells all”). The story told is not Van Jordan’s own (except in an historical/communal experience sense) but that of a black girl from Akron, Ohio who won the District spelling bee in 1936, then went on to the national championships in Washington D.C., where she came in fifth, having lost when the Southern judges gave her a word to spell, "nemesis," that was not on the official list (in other words, a word that she was not responsible for). Some of the poems in the book relate the story of the spelling bee and others the story (more a set of images, than an account) of MacNolia’s marriage to John Montiere. Breaking up (or through) the personal story are a series of blues poems that call upon (call forth/ recall) such historical/cultural figures as Jesse Owens, Richard Pryor, Bill Robinson, Mudbone, Josephine Baker, Asa Philip Randolph and Fats Waller. By definition, spelling is about words, about how a word looks, rather than how or what it means. In MacNolia’s case, being a champion speller also came down to how she looked, rather than what she was capable of doing or being. For the poet, words have a look, a sound, meanings and histories, as well as History about them. Van Jordan plays with all these aspects of words in the poems that comprise MACNOLIA. Among the most intriguing to me are the definition poems: “inchoate,” "from," “afterglow,” “with,” and “to.” Especially in "from," “with” and “to,” I found myself emphasizing the italicized "defined" words while reading them, which set up an hypnotic rhythm and created the feel of a percussive, fragmented syntax in an on-the-surface-of-it straightforward line. Musically and thematically, MACNOLIA brings to mind Toni Morrision’s novel Jazz, while formally, although quite different in form and content, it made me think of Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Which brings me back to my initial inclination to read MACNOLIA as a novel rather than as a collection of poems.

[R.G. Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the book jacket: "In 196, MacNolia Cox became the first African American to reach the final round of the national spelling bee competition. The Southern judges, it is thought, kept her from winning by presenting a word not on the official list."

In MACNOLIA, A. Van Jordan presents the story of MacNolia Cox as told through dramatic monologues by many voices--her own, her husband's, Fats Waller & Bojangles Robinson, Josephine Baker and others--spanning the years 1936 to 1980. The aftermath of her betrayal at her moment of triumph is powerfully portrayed through dictionary entry poems and the techniques of screenwriting as well.

I heard Jordan read at the AWP in New York last year, and was captivated by his poem "The Night Richard Pryor Met Mudbone" (contained somewhat anomalously in MACNOLIA). This poem alone makes the book a worthy read, as does Jordan's sweeping grasp of the varied emotions of African Americans betrayed and oppressed throughout the 20th century.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

MacNolia and her "nemesis" spelling bee were a great historical find on the poet's part. I also appreciate a poem collection with this much arc and attention to form. It was an enjoyable read. It would probably have been more exciting, though, before dictionary entry poems were so common and I had read so many books by writers about words.

I wanted more from both form and language as I kept reading, up to par with several shining moments in it. And, the risk of a book written from a certain persona(e) in order to fill in for that person(s) previously-silenced voice is obvious: it was hard to forget every time a description or internal monologue struck me as shallow or stereotypical. I'd have to read it again to comment on the many interspersed quotations and film motif (which might be the only reason I'd return to it).

[ryo narasaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

favorites: linked sestinas: "Time Reviews the Ziegfield Follies Featuring Josephine Baker, 1936" and "Asa Philip Randolph", also "to", and "The Night Richard Pryor Met Mudbone," the epigraph to which is from Hagakure and reminds me of one of my students. It says "It is spiritless to think you cannot attain to that which you have seen and heard the masters attain. The masters are men. You are also a man." Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

I had seen some of the poems in the dictionary-entry form and had really admired them. As a form I think they work very well and I would like to try to use them more in my speach tree project...

[kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poetry that reads like a novel; each poem intricately intertwined to tell the story of MacNolia Cox, the first African American to go to the National Spelling Bee in Akron, Ohio in 1936 and her later complicated marriage to John Montier, made more complicated by the racial tensions of the time and the economic downturn which hit blacks especially hard.
The imagrey of the motifs that moves in and out of each of these poems binds them together into a tight little package waiting to be unwrapped like Christams morning.
Make a pot of tea and take the afternoon to read this beautiful book.

[Nicola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed teaching this book under the topic of Persona. I had my students come up with the definition of the word Persona, a la Jordan, and their collaborations were some of the best poems they wrote all semester. Though it's true that the book is uneven, this seems to be the price of such a versatile, what-will-happen-on-the-next-page type of book. But for clear voice, imagery, diction, propulsion (funny how making the events/lives, at times, out of order, adds so much resonance and vivacity), and importance--I can think of very few collections that rival this book.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a perfect representation of a poet energized by his subject matter. Van Jordan develops each of the voices in M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A to a haunting degree. With just enough imagery and metaphor to keep the ear alive, Jordan follows/imagines the first African American girl to compete in the National Spelling Bee from her childhood all the way through disappointments and trials later in life. The poet even seasons this collection with the voice of Richard Pryor, as he first comes in contact with one of his classic comedic personas, Mudbone. A must-have for the poetry shelf.

[Jenny McDougal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar in style to Rita Dove's seminal Thomas and Beulah, Jordan's Macnolia is a riveting, profound, tragic, and faithful exploration of an African American girl's journey to become Spelling Bee champion in the 60s, her ultimate failure (due to racist foes), and her life as a domestic worker. Jordan captures the voices of the time with wit, humor, and tenderness. His faithfulness to Macnolia Cox and her story is delightful.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

ON FIRST READING, I WAS STRUCK BY HOW INVENTIVE JORDAN WAS IN CONCEIVING THE PERSONAE UPON WHICH IT IS BASED. AS I CONTINUED TO READ IT, I WAS BLOWN AWAY A SECOND TIME BY HIS SKILLFUL ADAPTATIONS OF TRADITIONAL FORMS OF POETRY TO TELL THE STORY.

READ "DEATH LETTER BLUES GHAZAL" TO SEE WHAT I MEAN.

[Peter Gaines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous book. I've handed this to students and had them fall in love. I've heard Van read from the book to spellbound groups of all ages. Wonderful lessons here for a write considering persona, perspective, and writing from an occasion.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poet really provides a true sense of how hard it was being a young black girl trying to win a spelling bee. she lost and came in 5th place only because of dishonest actions by the judge. The structure and form of the book is superb.

[Dan Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book of poems that tells a narrative story. The techniques Jordan uses are very vast, but they all somehow melt together into one cohesive style. There is really no other way to describe it besides a masterpiece.

[Donnelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. Van Jordan . . . a poet with graceful force . . . beautiful story and all true . .. wow.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

unbelievable book of poetry.

[Seven · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't know what to say about this book other than i am forever changed.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is pretty good, the formal innovation as far as the prose poem is concerned excites me most. But he doesn't take it to many exciting heights. Guess that's not the point.