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Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo
In this third collection of verse, Esteves takes all of the rhythmic, bluesy potential and the women's poetic militancy of previous works and brings them to full, resplendent, funky bloom, blending the oral and literary traditions in a fusion of spiritual, blues end women's poetics.
- GenresPoetry
87 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1990
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 4, 2025
Well written poetry but not memorable
December 10, 2013
2.5 stars
I wanted to love Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo, if only because the title is so quirky and compelling. Unfortunately, while I did enjoy some of the poems, on the whole, the collection seemed too heavy-handed and didactic.
The best poems were those that focused on individual lives. "Springfield," for example, describes a girl wandering while her godmother works as a maid--the neighborhood becoming "a backyard feast of explorations." "Mambo Love Poem" shows a couple joyfully dancing and forgetting their troubles, "like two birds flying through the open sky,/in mambo cha-cha to celebrate their joy." And "Invisible Inscriptions" is a powerful poem about a woman leaving a bad relationship, and discovering her talent as a poet. On a sadder note, "Death Watch" is an excellent depiction of the indignity of medicalized death, and the cadence of "Original Jones Poem in B flat" echoes the thoughts of an addict.
The special power of words, through poetry, is a repeated theme in the first section, including in two of my favorites: "I Want to Paint" and "This Is a Hill that Climbs," where the "silent haven" of the soul's language is described as: "a tree that is seen for miles/Upon which come the winged/to build their nests."
This is a hill rising from the earth.
A swollen breast
suckling her children,
adorning their crowns with great feathers,
peacock and phoenix,
wild mockingbird.
Unfortunately, when the poems tackle big issues in a general way--social injustice, apartheid (the collection is from 1990), slavery, pollution, the military-industrial complex--they sound more like rants. I'm not faulting Esteves for being angry; as the saying goes, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. But at times, I thought the selections read more like a pamphlet than a poem. It's not that I disagree with the sentiment in "South Bronx Testimonial #3, We Are All Insane," for example: "We have lost our freedoms/to walk barefoot over the earth/without stepping on dubious manufactured chemicals/guaranteed to produce plastic lawn..." It just doesn't work for me as a poem.
Occasionally, this heavy-handedness is a bit cringe-worthy, such as the metaphor at the end of "Puerto Rican Discovery #5, Here Like There": "laying to rot in ambivalent warehouses/of aborted children/from an indifferent/...mother."
Well, the mockingbird is a mimic, known for repeating the songs of other birds. Perhaps I should think of these poems as singing back to us a wide range of sentiments; though I might find some less than tuneful, I have no doubt they are all sincere.
I wanted to love Bluestown Mockingbird Mambo, if only because the title is so quirky and compelling. Unfortunately, while I did enjoy some of the poems, on the whole, the collection seemed too heavy-handed and didactic.
The best poems were those that focused on individual lives. "Springfield," for example, describes a girl wandering while her godmother works as a maid--the neighborhood becoming "a backyard feast of explorations." "Mambo Love Poem" shows a couple joyfully dancing and forgetting their troubles, "like two birds flying through the open sky,/in mambo cha-cha to celebrate their joy." And "Invisible Inscriptions" is a powerful poem about a woman leaving a bad relationship, and discovering her talent as a poet. On a sadder note, "Death Watch" is an excellent depiction of the indignity of medicalized death, and the cadence of "Original Jones Poem in B flat" echoes the thoughts of an addict.
The special power of words, through poetry, is a repeated theme in the first section, including in two of my favorites: "I Want to Paint" and "This Is a Hill that Climbs," where the "silent haven" of the soul's language is described as: "a tree that is seen for miles/Upon which come the winged/to build their nests."
This is a hill rising from the earth.
A swollen breast
suckling her children,
adorning their crowns with great feathers,
peacock and phoenix,
wild mockingbird.
Unfortunately, when the poems tackle big issues in a general way--social injustice, apartheid (the collection is from 1990), slavery, pollution, the military-industrial complex--they sound more like rants. I'm not faulting Esteves for being angry; as the saying goes, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. But at times, I thought the selections read more like a pamphlet than a poem. It's not that I disagree with the sentiment in "South Bronx Testimonial #3, We Are All Insane," for example: "We have lost our freedoms/to walk barefoot over the earth/without stepping on dubious manufactured chemicals/guaranteed to produce plastic lawn..." It just doesn't work for me as a poem.
Occasionally, this heavy-handedness is a bit cringe-worthy, such as the metaphor at the end of "Puerto Rican Discovery #5, Here Like There": "laying to rot in ambivalent warehouses/of aborted children/from an indifferent/...mother."
Well, the mockingbird is a mimic, known for repeating the songs of other birds. Perhaps I should think of these poems as singing back to us a wide range of sentiments; though I might find some less than tuneful, I have no doubt they are all sincere.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews