When Winter Come: The Ascension of York

Kentucky Voices

by Frank X. Walker

A sequel to the award-winning Buffalo Dance, Frank X Walker's When Winter Come is a dramatic reimagining of Lewis and Clark's legendary exploration of the American West. By focusing on the humanity and struggles of York, Clark's slave, When Winter Come challenges conventional views of the journey's heroes and exposes the deeds, both great and ghastly, of the men behind the myth. Grounded in the history of the famous trip, Walker's vibrant account allows York -- little more than a forgotten footnote in traditional narratives -- to embody the full range of human ability, knowledge, emotion, and experience. He is a skillful hunter who kills his prey with both grace and reverence, and he thinks deeply about the proper place of humans in the natural world. York knows the seasons "like a book," and he "can read moss, sunsets, the moon, and a mare's foaling time with a touch." The Native peoples understand and honor York's innate bond with the earth. Though his expertise is integral to the journey's success, York's masters do not reward him; they know only the way of the lash. The alternately heartbreaking and uplifting poems in When Winter Come are told from multiple perspectives and rendered in vivid detail. On the journey, York forges a spiritual connection and shares sensual delights with a Nez Perce woman, and he aches when he is forced to leave her and their unborn son. Walker's poems capture the profound feelings of love and loss on each side of this ill-fated meeting of souls. When the trek ends and York is sent back to his former home, his wife and stepmother air their joys and grievances. As the perspectives of Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and others in the party emerge, Walker also gives voice to York's knife, his hunting shirt, and the river waters that have borne the labors and travels of thousands before and after the Lewis and Clark expedition. Despite fleeting hints that escape is possible, slavery continues to bind York and quell the joyful noise in his spirit until his death. Walker's poems, however, give York his voice after centuries of silence. When Winter Come exalts the historical persona of a slave and lifts the soul of a man. York ascends out of his chains, out of oblivion, and into flight.

Genres: Poetry, Historical Fiction

134 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Multidisciplinary artist Frank X Walker is a native of Danville, KY, a graduate of the University of Kentucky, and completed an MFA in Writing at Spalding University in May 2003. He has lectured, conducted workshops, read poetry and exhibited at over 300 national conferences and universities including the Verbal Arts Centre in Derry, Northern Ireland; Santiago, Cuba; University of California at Berkeley; Notre Dame; Louisiana State University at Alexandria; University of Washington; Virginia Tech; Radford University; and Appalachian State University.
A founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, he is the editor of America! What's My Name? The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag (Wind Publications, 2007) and Eclipsing a Nappy New Millennium and the author of four poetry collections: When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), winner of the 35th Annual Lillian Smith Book Award; and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000), a Kentucky Public Librarians' Choice Award nominee.
A Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship recipient, Walker's poems have been converted into a stage production by the University of Kentucky Theatre department and widely anthologized in numerous collections; including The Appalachian Journal, Limestone, Roundtable, My Brothers Keeper, Spirit and Flame: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature and Art. He is a former contributing writer and columnist for Ace Weekly and the first Kentucky writer to be featured on NPR's This I Believe.
Other new work appeared recently in Mischief, Caprice & Other Poetic Strategies (Red Hen Press), Tobacco (Kentucky Writers Coalition), Kentucky Christmas (University Press of Kentucky), Cornbread Nation III, Kudzu, The Kentucky Anthology: Two Hundred Years of Writing in the Bluegrass (University Press of Kentucky) and the Louisville Review.
He has appeared on television in PBS's GED Connection Series, Writing: Getting Ideas on Paper, in In Performance At the Governor's Mansion and in Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky. He contributed to Writing Our Stories: An Anti-Violence Creative Writing Program Curriculum Guide developed by the Alabama Writer's Forum and the Alabama Department of Youth Services. He co-produced a video documentary, Coal Black Voices: the History of the Affrilachian Poets, which received the 2002-2003 Jesse Stuart Award presented by the Kentucky School Media Association, and produced a documentary exploring the effects of 9.11 on the arts community, KY2NYC: Art/life & 9.11. His visual art is in the private collections of Spike Lee, Opal Palmer Adisa, Morris FX Jeff, and Bill and Camille Cosby.
Articles about Frank and the Affrilachian Poets can be seen in Kentucky Monthly and Arts Across Kentucky.
Walker has served as founder/Executive Director of the Bluegrass Black Arts Consortium, the Program Coordinator of the University of Kentucky's King Cultural Center and the Assistant Director of Purdue University's Black Cultural Center. The University of Kentucky awarded Walker an honorary Doctorate of Humanities in 2001 for his collective community work and artistic achievements. Transylvania University awarded Walker an honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 2002.
He is the recipient of the 2006 Thomas D. Clark Literary Award for Excellence, Actors Theatre's Keeper of the Chronicle Award and a 2005 Recipient of a $75,000 Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry.
He has held board positions for the Kentucky Humanities Council, Appalshop and the Kentucky Writers Coalition as well as a government appointment to Cabinet for Education, Arts & Humanities and the Committee on Gifted Education. He has served as vice president of the Kentucky Center for the Arts and the executive director of Kentucky's Governor's School for the Ar

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subtitled: The Ascension of York

This book of poetry is a sequel to Walker's book Buffalo Dance. Both are poems focusing on the experience of York, the only black/slave member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. As such, this volume was doubly interesting to me because I'm a fan of the Corps of Discovery and had wondered in the past how it could be rendered in poetry. I have to say that in the end I valued it more as marginalia to the history and literature of that expedition than as a book of poetry.

Walker is to be commended on the broad approach he takes to giving voice to those who did not leave their own personal record of that expedition. He has been very sensitive to the Native American perspective and includes the voices of York's father and mother, York's slave wife and his Nez Perce wife, and Sacagawea. He also has poems from the perspectives of York's hunting shirt, hatchet, and knife. The variety of views and voices, as well as the narrative arc, gives the book forward momentum.

The poems at the beginning of the book make him seem a bit too bigger-than-life. It felt like overcompensating. However, this is partly to express his new-found self-esteem, to show how different life with the expedition and among the Indians was from being immersed in the system of slavery.

The second half of the book deals more with York's flaws as a person and the awful time he had upon returning to "civilization." Walker has done what he can to base his poems on historical fact. York asked for his freedom and Clark refused to grant it. Eventually, York disappeared from known records. Walker represents the conventional view, taken from an interview with Clark, that York remained in the east, in the later part of his life lived independently (presumably free), but was not successful and died of cholera. He does not pursue the notion that York returned to live with Indians.

I found the poetry rather dry and preferred the voices of Rose, York's mother, to the other voices in the book. From "Too Many Wives and None":

She was a lil' foolish fo' choosin' him,
but a good wife is what she was, too good
fo' his heavy hands an pigheaded ways.
After she gone, maybe he'll 'preciate
what he had. He did his share a knockin'
an' now he gettin' his on both ends.

My favorite poem is "Wordsmith," which is told by York but is about Drewyer, one of the Frenchmen that join the expedition and knows the sign language used between Indian nations.

He could make his body say buffalo or dear or bear.

His hands could be a great bald eagle or a hummingbird.
His arms and neck could call up a snake or a river.

Sometimes 'round the fire we ask him to sign us a story
just for the pleasure of seeing him make the words move.

I'll keep this book and keep an eye out for the first one. But only because the Corps of Discovery fascinates me, not because of the poetry.

[Jennifer James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book of poems follows up on Walker's earlier Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York. Like Buffalo Dance, this book tells the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition from the perspective of York, an African-American slave who was part of the expedition. However, the perspective is broader in this book as some of the poems are from the point of view of the various women in York's life, including a Nez Perce woman and Sacagawea. The poems are even more powerful than the ones in the earlier book. One of the themes is the connections between violence and oppression based on race (African-American and American Indian), gender, and even sexual orientation. Highly recommended.

[Alexandria Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible sequel to Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York. This collection follows the struggles of William Clark's slave, York during the Lewis & Clark expedition. Walker's poems capture the voices of Sacagawea, Lewis, Clark, York's slave wife, his Nez Perce wife, York's hunting shirt, The River, York's knife, hatchet and of York himself. The reader discovers the magic in the man who was honored by the Native Americans he encountered on the trip as "Big Medicine." York was a natural in the wilderness who understood God in Nature and Nature in God although he was treated as less than a man by his owner Clark. These poems were heartbreaking and inspiring. I highly recommend reading this collection as well as Buffalo Dance. This is incredible, heart felt writing.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I generally love books that take up the perspective of a lesser known character, but the language here didn't thrill me. It was interesting that so many voices were represented: York, his Native American lover, his slave wife (whose name was never recorded, of course), his mother, his hunting implements, etc.

[Linda Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book of Poetry I've read in many years

[Emily Snyder · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't quite consider myself a "poetry lover," but I couldn't put this down. Walker's pieces are at once powerful as they stand on their own, and hugely fascinating as a combined narrative.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wherever the books about Lewis and Clark are kept, this one should be beside it. I couldn't put this poetry book down.

[ash · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a pretty interesting read! And, I got to "meet" Frank X Walker; he visited my class virtually.

[Debra · Rating 3 out of 5]

As those who follow me know, I don't care for poetry. I do continue to read the Chautauqua selection each year though. I liked the theme of this collection and appreciated the notes at the end of the work. York doesn't get enough recognition for his part in the Lewis & Clark Expedition.