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the black maria
Praise for Aracelis
"[Girmay's] every loss—she calls them estrangements—is a yearning for connection across time and place; her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin." — O, The Oprah Magazine
Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, the black maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.
"to the sea"
great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our carnations
yellow & pink, how they float
like bright sentences atop
your memory's dark hair
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three poetry collections, the black maria ; Kingdom Animalia , which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award; and Teeth . The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
"[Girmay's] every loss—she calls them estrangements—is a yearning for connection across time and place; her every fragment is a bulwark against ruin." — O, The Oprah Magazine
Taking its name from the moon's dark plains, misidentified as seas by early astronomers, the black maria investigates African diasporic histories, the consequences of racism within American culture, and the question of human identity. Central to this project is a desire to recognize the lives of Eritrean refugees who have been made invisible by years of immigration crisis, refugee status, exile, and resulting statelessness. The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Girmay's newest collection elegizes and celebrates life, while wrestling with the humanistic notion of seeing seeing violence, seeing grace, and seeing each other better.
"to the sea"
great storage house, history
on which we rode, we touched
the brief pulse of your fluttering
pages, spelled with salt & life,
your rage, your indifference
your gentleness washing our feet,
all of you going on
whether or not we live,
to you we bring our carnations
yellow & pink, how they float
like bright sentences atop
your memory's dark hair
Aracelis Girmay is the author of three poetry collections, the black maria ; Kingdom Animalia , which won the Isabella Gardner Award and was a finalist for the NBCC Award; and Teeth . The recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award, she has received grants and fellowships from the Jerome, Cave Canem, and Watson foundations, as well as Civitella Ranieri and the NEA. She currently teaches at Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and in Drew University's low residency MFA program. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
120 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 2016
46 people are currently reading
1574 people want to read
About the author
Aracelis Girmay
26 books138 followersAracelis Girmay is an American poet. Her poems trace the connections of transformation and loss across cities and bodies.
In 2011 Girmay was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member, she led youth and community writing workshops.
In 2011 Girmay was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. A Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member, she led youth and community writing workshops.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
April 1, 2016
oh my goodness... heart of my heart
i love this woman so much!
this collection is filled with death, sadness, grief, the sea, race, history, family, love, motherhood, joy. how to talk about grief without perpetuating it and tr to express joy is something that girmay talks about which is a big part of this collection and something we all try to do.
so many sections and her descriptions/personification astonish me and is why I love her so much. i go back to her work often and this is no different.
one of my most anticipated collections of the year and one of the best (my favorite) poets writing today.
i love this woman so much!
this collection is filled with death, sadness, grief, the sea, race, history, family, love, motherhood, joy. how to talk about grief without perpetuating it and tr to express joy is something that girmay talks about which is a big part of this collection and something we all try to do.
so many sections and her descriptions/personification astonish me and is why I love her so much. i go back to her work often and this is no different.
one of my most anticipated collections of the year and one of the best (my favorite) poets writing today.
August 4, 2020
i find it hard to find words for books during this apocalyptic time but this is, well, this is like no poetry collection i've read (i have read so very few so this means nothing really except that it is extraordinary). the poems weave a story, and the story is about exile, forced migration, colonialism, the sea, death hurt death hurt, beloved eritrean bodies, beloved black bodies in america, forgiveness, love, tradition, and the bonds of humans to humans and neighbors to neighbors and ancestors to descendants and people to all of nature. since a lot of it takes place in italy, NOT IN A GOOD WAY, it was a bit hard for me to read. italians have this abiding fantasy of themselves as "the good ones" and aracelis girmay tells us hmm no, no, darlings, you are letting humans drown and starve and be slaves in your own homes so no, nope, not good at all. and this is SO MUCH *NOT* THE STORY I HEAR FROM ITALY, which is all about the sainted people of lampedusa (no love lost for lampedusa in this book) who save EVERYONE and WELCOME EVERYBODY and you know what? at first i didn't believe girmay, at first i believed the storytelling of goodness i get from italy and from my mom. and then i had to tell myself, jo, believe those who die. because also, you see, italy invaded eritrea during WWII and while the history books tell us it was no big deal, italians were out of there in no time, no harm done, the eritrean people have a totally different version of this story. so i grew up with italian bumbling and incompetence and then i read this book and was confronted with italian evil. and i had to reorganize my mind and believe those who die.
but this book is full of water, food, bread, green, air, stars, planet, salt and love, and this is what girmay gave me beside gut punching sorrow and humble pie, and i am a bit of a better person because of this wondrous book. i also wanna say that it took me more than 2 months to read it. you don't want to rush through these poems. girmay's words read like scripture. you don't want to rush through scripture.
but this book is full of water, food, bread, green, air, stars, planet, salt and love, and this is what girmay gave me beside gut punching sorrow and humble pie, and i am a bit of a better person because of this wondrous book. i also wanna say that it took me more than 2 months to read it. you don't want to rush through these poems. girmay's words read like scripture. you don't want to rush through scripture.
November 16, 2016
Important, gorgeous poems that manage to uplift and devastate the reader simultaneously. Teeth and Kingdom Anamalia were beautiful collections, and I thought the latter was a particular achievement, but The Black Maria feels magnum-opus-like -- except now I expect Girmay will write something in a few years' time that will knock me flat yet again.
May 15, 2019
Girmay is a gifted poet. In these poems, she looks back at her ancestral country, Eritrea and the diaspora that was the result of the slave trade. Despite the painful topic, Girmay still manages to keep a sense of beauty amid the terror and tragedy. A significant work.
April 2, 2017
The sea and death and sorrow, a review promised. Displacement and Eritrean diaspora and a history that includes the history happening now. The first part, elegy, I don't think it would be possible to excerpt without its context, without the interplay of the complete work. It tells us of four women called Luam from different times and places, it tells us of the sea and the dead.
In the second part "The Black Maria" and "Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement" were the poems that winded me. Seeing the names of those who died as a result of police violence, reading the poem about young Neil deGrasse Tyson--acknowledging in the telling of the story that even though we know the end we still hold our breath in fear of what could happen to him--is what makes this stand out. It connects past with present, joining together the colonialism and racism of different times to display it as a long-reigning and unsegmented oppressor.
In the second part "The Black Maria" and "Cooley High, Fifth Estrangement" were the poems that winded me. Seeing the names of those who died as a result of police violence, reading the poem about young Neil deGrasse Tyson--acknowledging in the telling of the story that even though we know the end we still hold our breath in fear of what could happen to him--is what makes this stand out. It connects past with present, joining together the colonialism and racism of different times to display it as a long-reigning and unsegmented oppressor.
June 26, 2020
Unlike most collections of poetry I've read, the poems in this book are connected, even inter-connected, and they tell a story, but that story is not always clear. The organization of this book is a little confusing at first glance. It was hard for me to tell where a poem began or ended, and I kept checking the ToC to see what I was reading. Everything here is filled with beauty and colors: dark like the night sea, iridescent like the inside of a shell, white like piles of salt, blue like the sky.
If Constantine Cavafy
Wrote Engine Empire
About Eritrea
It would be like this book.
luam remembers massawa
—umbertide
There, small hills of salt
on either side of the grey road,
the blue sky & the sun burdened with sun.
White mounds & beige flats.
This is what is left
of an evaporated sea
separated from
the rest of the sea.
One is you, one is me.
Distance: my wealth.
Distance: my grief.
If Constantine Cavafy
Wrote Engine Empire
About Eritrea
It would be like this book.
from prayer & letter to the dead
While the room is still
dry here,
while the page is still
white, still here,
more shore than sea, more still
than alive, while the air is now
touching the dark & funny fruit of
your eyebrows where it is quiet enough
for me to hear the small sighing
of your shoes lift up into
the old & broken boat,
while the small hands of water
wave, each one waving
its blue handkerchief, then
the gentle flutter of luck
& tears. We all know
what happens next. Do not go.
But if you must,
risking what you will, then,
in a language that is my first
but nor your first, & with what I know
& do not know, I will try to build
a shore for you here, a landing place, here
where the paper dreams
that you will last. Our parents
& our grandparents taught
us: in the school of dreaming,
the discipline of dreaming.
It is my work: to revise & revise,
even as you are filling my eyes, now,
& you are filling the sea (Courages).
& the fishermen drop their veils
into your grave.
August 17, 2020
So blessed to be alive at a time in which Aracelis Girmay is writing poetry. This was a gorgeous and difficult read. I took my time with it and I am glad I did. And I know I'll come back to this meditation on history, the sea, slavery, Black lives lost and remembered, and the moon. These poems won't leave me.
My forever favorite line in this book and in all of poetry: "& so to tenderness, I add my action."
My forever favorite line in this book and in all of poetry: "& so to tenderness, I add my action."
July 1, 2021
I'm learning that I don't actually like poetry collections. I like my poetry in one-off bits of inspiration, conspiring to sweep me off my feet and dazzle me. You'd think I'd like the building of poetry collections, how the poems can feed off of each other, but I just find myself getting bored. Aracelis Girmay is still a goddess; I just wanted a different book, which is on me.
January 30, 2025
third Girmay poetry book, & she is such a force that I cannot recommend enough.
*
intro:
“And there are stars, but none of you, to spare.”
— June Jordan, “Sunflower Sonnet Number Two”
It is estimated that over 20,000 people have died at sea making the journey from North Africa to Europe in the past two decades. On October 3, 2013, it is estimated that 300 people died at sea off the coast of Lampedusa, Those on board the boat that sank were nearly all Eritrean.
This cycle of poems focuses on Eritrean history, as this is a history I am somewhat familiar with as someone of its diaspora.
But, of course, the history of people searching for political asylum and opportunity (both) much larger than Eritrean history alone.
*
luam, who says to the dead,
—sea near lampedusa
I saw the hundred
fishes from a distance
& this is what I knew:
they were not fishes,
they were you.
(39)
*
strange earth, strange
that we will die into
this bright, blue oblivion
though the day is beautiful
& later, the night will
also be (beautiful)
with the noise of crickets who,
even as we lose & lose make
their bodies creak
with desire & the dusk,
& we will call these sounds
"the future continuous," us
(61)
*
to the sea
our dead whose words you cannot know
& so you are protected from the dense contagion
of that sadness, so take them then (our messages & theirs)
what would it cost you?
nothing
(64)
*
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem... [this poem… & all the sections that follow (in the book, not on this link) are needed to be read by all…]
*
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
to the sea https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
luam/asa-luam https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
“She was my mother after all,
& president of nothing.”
(85)
*
Flower, forgive me.
Forgive me for the grief I held
instead of what I might have held.
Dark with rain, giving me back
the beauty of the world,
those fields made me weep.
(86-7)
*
intro:
“And there are stars, but none of you, to spare.”
— June Jordan, “Sunflower Sonnet Number Two”
It is estimated that over 20,000 people have died at sea making the journey from North Africa to Europe in the past two decades. On October 3, 2013, it is estimated that 300 people died at sea off the coast of Lampedusa, Those on board the boat that sank were nearly all Eritrean.
This cycle of poems focuses on Eritrean history, as this is a history I am somewhat familiar with as someone of its diaspora.
But, of course, the history of people searching for political asylum and opportunity (both) much larger than Eritrean history alone.
*
luam, who says to the dead,
—sea near lampedusa
I saw the hundred
fishes from a distance
& this is what I knew:
they were not fishes,
they were you.
(39)
*
strange earth, strange
that we will die into
this bright, blue oblivion
though the day is beautiful
& later, the night will
also be (beautiful)
with the noise of crickets who,
even as we lose & lose make
their bodies creak
with desire & the dusk,
& we will call these sounds
"the future continuous," us
(61)
*
to the sea
our dead whose words you cannot know
& so you are protected from the dense contagion
of that sadness, so take them then (our messages & theirs)
what would it cost you?
nothing
(64)
*
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem... [this poem… & all the sections that follow (in the book, not on this link) are needed to be read by all…]
*
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
to the sea https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
luam/asa-luam https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...
*
“She was my mother after all,
& president of nothing.”
(85)
*
Flower, forgive me.
Forgive me for the grief I held
instead of what I might have held.
Dark with rain, giving me back
the beauty of the world,
those fields made me weep.
(86-7)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 14, 2017
3.5...
I struggled deciding how many stars to give this one. 2? 3? 4? The poet is clearly talented, and the themes of racism and violence need to be voiced here and now in America. But this book is overly ambitious. It's really like three books in one. It's dense. And there are some redundancies. And there were times I almost gave up reading because, frankly, I was bored. But the second half was so much more moving than the first, and when I read Part I of the title poem, "The Black Maria," I shivered and cried. It was so beautiful and so sad and so true, that I would have read this book all over again just to get to this one poem. So, I started at 2 stars, moved to 3 stars toward the second half of the book, and after reading that poem, I am leaning toward 4. Let's say 3.5. 3.5 stars for a book that includes a poem about Neil deGrasse Tyson as a boy who, despite being suspected by the police numerous times for being "up to something" while stargazing, grows up to be, well, Neil deGrasse Tyson. An anomaly, a role model, a dream for the future.
I struggled deciding how many stars to give this one. 2? 3? 4? The poet is clearly talented, and the themes of racism and violence need to be voiced here and now in America. But this book is overly ambitious. It's really like three books in one. It's dense. And there are some redundancies. And there were times I almost gave up reading because, frankly, I was bored. But the second half was so much more moving than the first, and when I read Part I of the title poem, "The Black Maria," I shivered and cried. It was so beautiful and so sad and so true, that I would have read this book all over again just to get to this one poem. So, I started at 2 stars, moved to 3 stars toward the second half of the book, and after reading that poem, I am leaning toward 4. Let's say 3.5. 3.5 stars for a book that includes a poem about Neil deGrasse Tyson as a boy who, despite being suspected by the police numerous times for being "up to something" while stargazing, grows up to be, well, Neil deGrasse Tyson. An anomaly, a role model, a dream for the future.
May 4, 2017
Graceful…. Enlightening….Profound
These are the words that came to mind when I finished this dazzling poetry collection whose poems which at times were intimately personal and other times outraged at injustices in the world.
I was immersed in this collection as these poems whispered in my ear, touched my heart, and soothed my spirit.
Words like these had me reflecting on the deeper meaning of the written thoughts:
“if there were angels, they would be flies
who hover over our privacies,
kissing us with their mouths
that have kissed other wounds.”
These are the words that came to mind when I finished this dazzling poetry collection whose poems which at times were intimately personal and other times outraged at injustices in the world.
I was immersed in this collection as these poems whispered in my ear, touched my heart, and soothed my spirit.
Words like these had me reflecting on the deeper meaning of the written thoughts:
“if there were angels, they would be flies
who hover over our privacies,
kissing us with their mouths
that have kissed other wounds.”
February 25, 2024
I really, really wish this artist would pursue some more elevated forms! Brilliant in so many ways, she’s got some great metaphors, light motifs, and the core subjects of her poems are often great. However, the modern free-verse approach really deflates the meaning for me. I feel that if it were written in prose as a short story or took on strong meter and rhyme, the artwork would be brilliant. As it stands, it’s okay, but I’d pick up Milton instead.
August 23, 2022
Incredible collection! All of the poems were stunning and I have too many favorites to name.
July 31, 2024
Incredible work! A great poet. Her cadence, her reach. Just beautiful!
August 30, 2025
stunning lyrical the empathy and collectivity in this my god
April 27, 2021
"Want / the sirens to be / only the sirens. The sea / to be only the sea. O, magnolia / without blood, blackness / without blood."
March 15, 2023
This book is so beautiful and like the sea it is a book that carries and thrashes. The Black Maria so powerful and gentle. So huge-seeming and granular. no one is special no one is special but in every way. Also this book is the only one I have read that have made me grateful to flies, or made me think differently about them, see them from a different perspective.
March 23, 2023
aracelis girmay is such a masterful poet. upon opening this body of work, you feel a shiver travel up your spine as you read the call list. you, the dead; me, the living. girmay is all at once deeply thoughtful, care and consideration crafted into and around this body of work as she tells you how she's been contending with it, and intensely feeling, this work carries the ocean of grief-historical yet personal and of multiple voices. i'm not sure how to describe this work...it was quite moving, i think especially for diasporic peoples. which voices of the past speak to you now? whose? how do you contend with all that you now have and that your people, your ancestors didn't? was the struggle worth it? are you making it worth it?
that ship that ship that ship...you've never been on a ship, not like that, not like this, the Black Maria, but it haunts you. the sea is at once your coffin and your haven. it's a terrifying beauty that swallows whole. i come back to it, to you, all the time. this body of work haunts me, will haunt me, but in the best of ways that only language allows.
that ship that ship that ship...you've never been on a ship, not like that, not like this, the Black Maria, but it haunts you. the sea is at once your coffin and your haven. it's a terrifying beauty that swallows whole. i come back to it, to you, all the time. this body of work haunts me, will haunt me, but in the best of ways that only language allows.
June 23, 2021
This is the sort of book that makes me wish I was still in school. I hope that some English professor somewhere is teaching this thing and doing it justice.
October 23, 2021
“if there are angels, they are flies who hover over our privacies, kissing us with mouths that have kissed other wounds.”
“& god is small, smaller than we ever supposed, tiny, actually, & captive. Governed by what governs us.”
“strange earth, strange that we will die into this bright, blue oblivion though the day is beautiful & later the night will also be (beautiful)”
“& god is small, smaller than we ever supposed, tiny, actually, & captive. Governed by what governs us.”
“strange earth, strange that we will die into this bright, blue oblivion though the day is beautiful & later the night will also be (beautiful)”
May 9, 2020
This is a beautiful & expansive collection in 2 poem cycles, the first elelegy, which focuses on Eritrean history & diaspora, and the black maria which focuses on a more contemporary black/AA diaspora with references to Neil degrasse Tyson, black lives matter figures, George Jackson .
November 18, 2016
I don't read a lot of poetry these days but this made me feel like maybe I should change that. Beautiful!
June 7, 2020
"The Black Maria" by Aracelis Girmay is moving, lyrical, and lovely. She creates beauty out of memory and ache. This collection is page after page of gorgeous poems.
December 10, 2021
Another stunning triumph from Girmay, whose first two collections were already some of my all-time favorites. Although this book continues to explore grief, which has been a central theme of all her writing, The Black Maria feels significantly distinct compared to Teeth and Kingdom Animalia. Her earlier poems often felt both more personal to Girmay's experiences and more universal in their observations of the human condition. This collection has a much more focused concentration, and it's apparent Girmay did extensive research as a part of her process. The first two thirds of the book, "elelegy," explore Eritrean history (and Girmay herself belongs to the Eritrean diaspora), particularly related to the 20,000+ people who have died at sea journeying from North Africa to Europe, and specifically the 300 who were estimate to have died on a particular voyage from Eritrea in 2013. I think that the poem "poetry & history," where Girmay remembers a poetry panel where a woman describes poetry as the work of weaving the black thread of grief into something so that others don't inherit it accidentally, serves as a thesis for this project. And at first, I wasn't sure if I would appreciate this as much as Girmay's past work –– many of the poems in the first 50 pages inspired awe at her mastery of language and imagery, but they also felt harder to grasp (like the water she so frequently describes).
But then there were a string of "Luam" poems (written from the perspective of a fictionalized Eritrean woman named Luam" that were breathtaking: "the luams speak of god," "luam, asmara" (!!!), "luam & the flies, umbertride, asmara, ney york," "luam mending clothes," and "luam, new york." A number of these involve reflections on flies that feels so quintessential to Girmay's older work: noticing the beauty of something seemingly insignificant and even a little grotesque and heralding them. Her comparison of flies to angels is one of my favorite parts of the book. At that point, having underlined so much breathtaking lines, I knew this was already a five star collection, and it only continued from there. "to the sea" on 58 and "to the sea" on 62 were another two favorites of the collection, and in some ways feel like the heartbeat of it. Girmay addresses the sea almost as if a god, a being of power and magnitude and, ultimately, utter obliviousness to the devastation occurring within it, and I think her language here is some of her best. The themes of grief, heritage, migration, hope, and lament shimmer with a heartbreaking beauty here.
The second section, "the black maria," is a reference to the early theory that the craters of the moon were dark lakes, called "black maria." So the water theme continues and is coupled with imagery of the moon: "water and light" become a recurring motif, a reference to the ordinary things our bodies carry. This section acknowledges numerous deaths of Black Americans by police officers, and takes on a more explicitly politicized undercurrent (though it is always an undercurrent, and Girmay continues to explore these not as "issues" but as intimate human experiences). The titular poem here is probably the most popular of the collection, and definitely one of my favorites. It interweaves a story from Neil deGrasse Tyson's childhood with Girmay's experience becoming a mother (including II. about her visit to the OB/GYN and my favorite, VIII. which describes her giving birth to her son and marveling at the improbable miraculous beauty it is to be alive at all). The final poem is another powerhouse in the collection, closing it a bittersweet conclusion.
Girmay's stunning use of language, her reverence, her morbid playfulness, her tremendous grief, and her fragile hope all shine through these poems. The collection made me taught me in a way that never felt didactic and made me think differently about the sea, and flies, and angels, and life. It's a genuine feat.
But then there were a string of "Luam" poems (written from the perspective of a fictionalized Eritrean woman named Luam" that were breathtaking: "the luams speak of god," "luam, asmara" (!!!), "luam & the flies, umbertride, asmara, ney york," "luam mending clothes," and "luam, new york." A number of these involve reflections on flies that feels so quintessential to Girmay's older work: noticing the beauty of something seemingly insignificant and even a little grotesque and heralding them. Her comparison of flies to angels is one of my favorite parts of the book. At that point, having underlined so much breathtaking lines, I knew this was already a five star collection, and it only continued from there. "to the sea" on 58 and "to the sea" on 62 were another two favorites of the collection, and in some ways feel like the heartbeat of it. Girmay addresses the sea almost as if a god, a being of power and magnitude and, ultimately, utter obliviousness to the devastation occurring within it, and I think her language here is some of her best. The themes of grief, heritage, migration, hope, and lament shimmer with a heartbreaking beauty here.
The second section, "the black maria," is a reference to the early theory that the craters of the moon were dark lakes, called "black maria." So the water theme continues and is coupled with imagery of the moon: "water and light" become a recurring motif, a reference to the ordinary things our bodies carry. This section acknowledges numerous deaths of Black Americans by police officers, and takes on a more explicitly politicized undercurrent (though it is always an undercurrent, and Girmay continues to explore these not as "issues" but as intimate human experiences). The titular poem here is probably the most popular of the collection, and definitely one of my favorites. It interweaves a story from Neil deGrasse Tyson's childhood with Girmay's experience becoming a mother (including II. about her visit to the OB/GYN and my favorite, VIII. which describes her giving birth to her son and marveling at the improbable miraculous beauty it is to be alive at all). The final poem is another powerhouse in the collection, closing it a bittersweet conclusion.
Girmay's stunning use of language, her reverence, her morbid playfulness, her tremendous grief, and her fragile hope all shine through these poems. The collection made me taught me in a way that never felt didactic and made me think differently about the sea, and flies, and angels, and life. It's a genuine feat.
September 6, 2020
This is an absolutely dazzling collection of poetry. It reads like a collection of vulnerable and defiant voices speaking from the in-between spaces of suffering, degradation and humiliation. Girmay’s reference to ‘the sentences of the wound’ could encapsulate the whole collection, in which the wound of slavery and displacement, guilt and shame, is laid bare. The beautiful tenderness of human resilience nonetheless shines through: but this shared hope does not romanticise or invalidate the devastating heartbreak of the institutionalised racism and power imbalances inherited by generations of Eritreans and POC in general.
‘It carries the message of hunger & the sentences of the wound. It cannot carry the message without, itself, being touched’
‘while the air is now/ touching the dark & funny fruit of/ your eyebrows where it is quiet enough/ for me to hear the small sighing/ of your shoes’
‘You wanted/ to live, to study & to make/ things. To be free. In a war-land/ the birds all sing/ the saddest songs/ of people who will not write poems’
‘in whose armies our grandfathers fought/ against the beautiful bodies of their own neighbours’
‘to fill/ my language, like the stars do,/ with the light, anyway, of a future tense’
‘teach me how to read this blues, please/ differently. How not to/ assign all blackness near the sea/ a captivity’
‘their passive, handless terrorising, their/ pearlescent softness there-thereing./ Systolic & slow, go/ the long-legged/ hauling of the agonies’
‘the freedom we wasted/ on things/ , / the terror our acts lit/ into the wet retina of/ your memory if you should/ , / call it that’
‘Slowly, I shed the mind’s black hive,/ its small hairs & figures, its sense,/ & slowly I lose & lose my salt,/ & weep & leak, for I am warm, & breathing/ among the piazzas & bakeries/ & windmills while/ the trafficked & drowned, one by one, lose/ their breaths’
(Addressing moths)
‘In the morning/ your bodies, shavings/ of flight, here & there,/ having surrendered’
‘You were always dying/ in my sleep’
‘strange earth, strange/ that we will die into/ this bright, blue oblivion/ though the day is beautiful’
‘Language is something like this. A hard studying of cells under a microscope,/ cells on their way to becoming other things: a person, a book,/ a moon’
‘around our violence floated/ the universe’
‘Look! I’ve slipped into/ the surprise & trapdoor/ of my own heartache/ just like that’
‘a boy is/ kneeling on the rooftop, a boy who/ (it is important/ to mention here his skin/ is brown) prepares his telescope,/ the weights & rods,/ to better see the moon./ His neighbour/ (it is important to mention here/ that she is white) calls the police’
‘you might have worried for him/ in the white space between lines 5 & 6,/ or maybe even earlier,/ & you might be holding/ your breath for him right now/ because you know this story’
‘This poem/ wants only the moon in its hair & the boy on the roof./ The boy on the roof of this poem/ with a moon in his heart./ Splayed & sighing as a star in my arms./ Maybe he will be the boy who studies stars’
‘It carries the message of hunger & the sentences of the wound. It cannot carry the message without, itself, being touched’
‘while the air is now/ touching the dark & funny fruit of/ your eyebrows where it is quiet enough/ for me to hear the small sighing/ of your shoes’
‘You wanted/ to live, to study & to make/ things. To be free. In a war-land/ the birds all sing/ the saddest songs/ of people who will not write poems’
‘in whose armies our grandfathers fought/ against the beautiful bodies of their own neighbours’
‘to fill/ my language, like the stars do,/ with the light, anyway, of a future tense’
‘teach me how to read this blues, please/ differently. How not to/ assign all blackness near the sea/ a captivity’
‘their passive, handless terrorising, their/ pearlescent softness there-thereing./ Systolic & slow, go/ the long-legged/ hauling of the agonies’
‘the freedom we wasted/ on things/ , / the terror our acts lit/ into the wet retina of/ your memory if you should/ , / call it that’
‘Slowly, I shed the mind’s black hive,/ its small hairs & figures, its sense,/ & slowly I lose & lose my salt,/ & weep & leak, for I am warm, & breathing/ among the piazzas & bakeries/ & windmills while/ the trafficked & drowned, one by one, lose/ their breaths’
(Addressing moths)
‘In the morning/ your bodies, shavings/ of flight, here & there,/ having surrendered’
‘You were always dying/ in my sleep’
‘strange earth, strange/ that we will die into/ this bright, blue oblivion/ though the day is beautiful’
‘Language is something like this. A hard studying of cells under a microscope,/ cells on their way to becoming other things: a person, a book,/ a moon’
‘around our violence floated/ the universe’
‘Look! I’ve slipped into/ the surprise & trapdoor/ of my own heartache/ just like that’
‘a boy is/ kneeling on the rooftop, a boy who/ (it is important/ to mention here his skin/ is brown) prepares his telescope,/ the weights & rods,/ to better see the moon./ His neighbour/ (it is important to mention here/ that she is white) calls the police’
‘you might have worried for him/ in the white space between lines 5 & 6,/ or maybe even earlier,/ & you might be holding/ your breath for him right now/ because you know this story’
‘This poem/ wants only the moon in its hair & the boy on the roof./ The boy on the roof of this poem/ with a moon in his heart./ Splayed & sighing as a star in my arms./ Maybe he will be the boy who studies stars’
February 14, 2020
Even though Girmay emphasizes her focus on Eritrean history, she highlights the historical injustices of others as well, including the atrocities that occurred in the Belgian Congo. After living in Belgium, I learned firsthand how invisible this history is in Belgian society, let alone across the rest of the world. The suffering of the Congolese people did not end when the Belgians left. In fact, their country was severely fractured by political and cultural turmoil. Many would describe that the tragedies and injustices add up to irreparable damage, a wound that will always fester, that will never heal. I appreciated that Girmay made room for this voice in her collection.
The comparisons made in The Black Maria will make you dissect and sew together images you have been taught to keep separate. The relationship between angels, for instance, and flies. Girmay reveals to the reader that both are considered messengers, but flies carry the history of wounds and death for “they are the honest who know their history and take it everywhere” (p. 11)...
Read the entire review at: http://greatgraydays.home.blog/2020/0...
The comparisons made in The Black Maria will make you dissect and sew together images you have been taught to keep separate. The relationship between angels, for instance, and flies. Girmay reveals to the reader that both are considered messengers, but flies carry the history of wounds and death for “they are the honest who know their history and take it everywhere” (p. 11)...
Read the entire review at: http://greatgraydays.home.blog/2020/0...
September 23, 2020
Oh, this book, oh. I didn't go out of my way to get Aracelis Girmay's books until I recently read Ross Gay's "Be Holding" and the acknowledgements, where he talked about her/ her work, and I basically immediately ordered all her books. And god, thank the world, all of This, for poets and people like Ross Gay, like Aracelis Girmay, two people who I can only hope to be even half as generous as, even half as good at writing as. What would the terribleness of the world be without this kind of belief in and dedication to bearing witness to both it and the good, the miraculousness of our existing at all? And thank you, thank you, Aracelis Girmay for the witnessing you have done with this book. Thank you, thank you forr the bits of necessarily neverending proximity to the history and horrors of whiteness--a history and horror that my life was grown from-- that I have been given through your language. That terrible proximity, too, must be a gift, I know. And of course, the gift that is not necessarily mine, which is witnessing and learning from the flourishing generosity and joy of Black poets.
February 27, 2018
I haven't cried this much over poetry in a long time. Girl knows how to turn a phrase and everything in this is so relevant right now.
my favorites:
all of them, really. but:
"you are going now"
...& your brother
is telling his son now that you
are on your way, he is using
the present-tense to talk of you
though above their heads the kashmiri tree
is already stirring Shiva & fruit
to the sea (any) [all of these, but especially pg 30...]
Where are our dead, have you carried them
back to us? You repeat only,
Who, who?
"I love the azucenas, so bring them to you"
There is also your face that I love.
Your face, a red & gorgeous word
in a long sentence of a long story.
THE BLACK MARIA I. after Neil deGrasse Tyson
...you might be holding your breath right now
because you know this story,
it's a true story, though,
miraculously, in this version
of the story, anyway,
the boy on the roof of the Skyview lives
to tell the police that he is studying
the night & moon & lives
my favorites:
all of them, really. but:
"you are going now"
...& your brother
is telling his son now that you
are on your way, he is using
the present-tense to talk of you
though above their heads the kashmiri tree
is already stirring Shiva & fruit
to the sea (any) [all of these, but especially pg 30...]
Where are our dead, have you carried them
back to us? You repeat only,
Who, who?
"I love the azucenas, so bring them to you"
There is also your face that I love.
Your face, a red & gorgeous word
in a long sentence of a long story.
THE BLACK MARIA I. after Neil deGrasse Tyson
...you might be holding your breath right now
because you know this story,
it's a true story, though,
miraculously, in this version
of the story, anyway,
the boy on the roof of the Skyview lives
to tell the police that he is studying
the night & moon & lives
May 2, 2019
This is a book steeped in research and one that seeks to continue necessary work: a spotlight on the injustice of slavery, of men and women and children being forcibly taken from their homes—the effects at the time and also the inherited effects still present today in slaves’ ancestors: “if there are angels, they are flies / who hover over our privacies, / kissing us with mouths / that have kissed / other wounds.” Books like these, that are in explicit conversation with history and other authors, ask a lot of the reader on a concentration level. There is a lot of information to hold in your mind to fully appreciate the poems. I think Girmay has the right instinct for when to include epigraphs vs. notes in the back of the book, etc. This definitely feels like the work of a mature poet, which makes sense since this is her third book.
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