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Dictionary
Our experiences are what we used to navigate the world. Regardless if they are ones we choose or ones we are given, our experiences build the language we used to communicate with those around us. In Sharea Harris' debut collection of poetry, Dictionary, we are given an intimate account of the vocabulary that shapes a black woman from the American south. Navigating experiences of abuse, racism, abortion, and love we learn the language of one woman's identity; we learn what it means to survive. Through visual expression, various poetic forms, and play we see Sharea mold her identity and observe what it takes to rebuild who she is and birth who she wants to become. Dictionary is an artifact that looks at identity, it's evolution, and the experiences that shape it.
"Harris illustrates not only how insightful but also how gifted she is in its poetic vision, poignant thematic images, expressive designs and conceptual framing. Truly it says that Ms. Sharea Harris is entering the literary lexicon ablaze on her own terms."
-Professor Diedra L. Badejo, Ph.D.
"Harris illustrates not only how insightful but also how gifted she is in its poetic vision, poignant thematic images, expressive designs and conceptual framing. Truly it says that Ms. Sharea Harris is entering the literary lexicon ablaze on her own terms."
-Professor Diedra L. Badejo, Ph.D.
120 pages
Published May 7, 2016
7 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 12, 2016
Dictionaries are resources, guides of meaning and definition. They are a collection of a series of words. They contain the language of etymology, of history, of context. They’re used to ascribe a purpose to symbols, to describe their essences. But they reference themselves in their lexical loops. They’re associative, formed as they refer to other symbols. See: more words.
What's more, words in dictionaries can become lost. They can be stuck in tomes, changeless, trapped in limitations of their own knowledge. But while those words are ensnared in definition, they still have the potential of existence, a becoming that is never directly stated but suggested at. They are what they once were, what they could be, what they are not.
Dictionaries always exist of a past,
each word fixed across the pages.
As those pasts layer into the text,
there will continue to be living and dying,
living and dying, past the lines of the book.
Beyond the form of a dictionary, the world is still becoming.
Sharea Harris is becoming. She exists beyond her definitions as she tracks through pasts. Her poems meditate on all of her parts – on those endlessly shifting, transforming selves in a spectrum of identity. She gazes into the sacred of her internal self, questioning her roles, her purposes, in a weary of world.
She asks about love: how she can love others, how she can begin with herself. She lives in dichotomies, knowing of death and resurrection, depression and oasis. At the same time, her identity is not only of the internal. It is in relation: to countries, cultures, races, sexualities, genders, and cities. It is in her connection to lives, lives which drift together before leaving of time. It is in relation to the cruelty of those who imprison and murder people out of their becoming, who extinguish them before they begin.
How can a human
still love,
still live,
when institutions of violence
destroy citizens
who only wanted to
be?
How does self-care
coexist with compassion
for others? Are they the
same thing?
There might never be any absolutes in answers and actions. There might only be loops of words – references to memories in moments, repetitions of those moments again and again. But a dictionary is not only a categorization of pathways, past and potential. It is a reminder, one made for liberation from selves.
____________________________________________________________
Additional Features: Thematically intricate collages, erasure poetry, dictionary entries, index
____________________________________________________________
What's more, words in dictionaries can become lost. They can be stuck in tomes, changeless, trapped in limitations of their own knowledge. But while those words are ensnared in definition, they still have the potential of existence, a becoming that is never directly stated but suggested at. They are what they once were, what they could be, what they are not.
Dictionaries always exist of a past,
each word fixed across the pages.
As those pasts layer into the text,
there will continue to be living and dying,
living and dying, past the lines of the book.
Beyond the form of a dictionary, the world is still becoming.
Sharea Harris is becoming. She exists beyond her definitions as she tracks through pasts. Her poems meditate on all of her parts – on those endlessly shifting, transforming selves in a spectrum of identity. She gazes into the sacred of her internal self, questioning her roles, her purposes, in a weary of world.
She asks about love: how she can love others, how she can begin with herself. She lives in dichotomies, knowing of death and resurrection, depression and oasis. At the same time, her identity is not only of the internal. It is in relation: to countries, cultures, races, sexualities, genders, and cities. It is in her connection to lives, lives which drift together before leaving of time. It is in relation to the cruelty of those who imprison and murder people out of their becoming, who extinguish them before they begin.
How can a human
still love,
still live,
when institutions of violence
destroy citizens
who only wanted to
be?
How does self-care
coexist with compassion
for others? Are they the
same thing?
There might never be any absolutes in answers and actions. There might only be loops of words – references to memories in moments, repetitions of those moments again and again. But a dictionary is not only a categorization of pathways, past and potential. It is a reminder, one made for liberation from selves.
____________________________________________________________
Additional Features: Thematically intricate collages, erasure poetry, dictionary entries, index
____________________________________________________________
December 27, 2016
Personal, heavy, thought-provoking, beautiful. Sharea put all of herself onto the pages and in doing so put so much about every woman into her book. This book is a beautiful ode to what poetry really is - written art.
Read
June 1, 2016Sharea Harris's latest poetry collection is an awe-inspiring tour-de-force. This book is a creative work that is firing on all cylinders; every part of this work--from the poems to the arrangement and curation to the design of the book itself--is contributing in perfect concert to a powerful and personal experience that will demand and command your attention from the inside cover to the end of its index alphabet.
It's difficult to know where to draw attention in this review, because so many parts of this book are so excellent. The individual poems themselves, to begin, are exemplary. Harris shows a complete mastery of poetic forms, structure, and devices. There is a ton of variety in the language and structure itself, but the thematic focus is so tight that the book never feels disparate despite its many and varied mechanics.
But here I am getting stuck again, because it's unjust to speak to the quality of the poems without acknowledging how their arrangement and placement on the page feed into that quality. For example, the collection opens with four poems: "because you are going to see me run soon", "memory", "family", and "because I always feel like running". There are many choices Harris could have made with these poetic works. They are interconnected and could have been presented as one poem, perhaps split up by roman numerals or section headings. They could have been presented in-line, one after another, from one page to the next. They could have been spread throughout the book, like a memory that is revisited. But Harris chose to present them as four separate poems, each taking a two-page spread, one after the other, creating an instantly addictive momentum that throttled me forward, a momentum that continues through the first two-thirds of the book. And it should be noted, this is not a consistent design aesthetic applied throughout the book. Harris deviates when it contributes to the work. That intentionality, which is evident in every single aspect of the book, is really what is going to resonate most as you read this book.
And while Harris is wringing every individual page for its contribution to the book, the messaging across the entire book receives just as much intentionality. As I alluded before, the book is split in two parts, divided by a color collage insert. There is no "Section I/Section II" designation going on, but there is a shift at this point--in tone, in pacing, in design. Most noticeably, the connectedness of sets of poems is gone, along with the page-to-page momentum that came with it. This may sound like a criticism, but this shift effectively jars the reader into a new state of mind for the second part of the book. The poems seem to be divided between the personal and the political. The personal poems feed into each other, build off of each other; they're looser and feel more vulnerable. The political poems, in contrast, feel like standalone, prepared statements; they are more structured--airtight--like a policy stance. But Harris, as a black woman, does not have the luxury of fully separating these parts of herself. Her personal choices are narrowed by political circumstance; her political choices are impacted by personal experience. This messy quality reflects in her poems as the reader sees Harris want to JUST be a person or JUST be a poet--sometimes explicitly--but she cannot, and those elements spill over and into each other. It's an incredible and personal illustration of a generation, where so many people feel the call to action in their day to day lives, but are reluctant to answer.
There are so many things I can say about this excellent book, but here is the gist: Harris's collection is a visceral, masterfully crafted poetic experience. To not read this book is to commit a grave disservice to yourself.
It's difficult to know where to draw attention in this review, because so many parts of this book are so excellent. The individual poems themselves, to begin, are exemplary. Harris shows a complete mastery of poetic forms, structure, and devices. There is a ton of variety in the language and structure itself, but the thematic focus is so tight that the book never feels disparate despite its many and varied mechanics.
But here I am getting stuck again, because it's unjust to speak to the quality of the poems without acknowledging how their arrangement and placement on the page feed into that quality. For example, the collection opens with four poems: "because you are going to see me run soon", "memory", "family", and "because I always feel like running". There are many choices Harris could have made with these poetic works. They are interconnected and could have been presented as one poem, perhaps split up by roman numerals or section headings. They could have been presented in-line, one after another, from one page to the next. They could have been spread throughout the book, like a memory that is revisited. But Harris chose to present them as four separate poems, each taking a two-page spread, one after the other, creating an instantly addictive momentum that throttled me forward, a momentum that continues through the first two-thirds of the book. And it should be noted, this is not a consistent design aesthetic applied throughout the book. Harris deviates when it contributes to the work. That intentionality, which is evident in every single aspect of the book, is really what is going to resonate most as you read this book.
And while Harris is wringing every individual page for its contribution to the book, the messaging across the entire book receives just as much intentionality. As I alluded before, the book is split in two parts, divided by a color collage insert. There is no "Section I/Section II" designation going on, but there is a shift at this point--in tone, in pacing, in design. Most noticeably, the connectedness of sets of poems is gone, along with the page-to-page momentum that came with it. This may sound like a criticism, but this shift effectively jars the reader into a new state of mind for the second part of the book. The poems seem to be divided between the personal and the political. The personal poems feed into each other, build off of each other; they're looser and feel more vulnerable. The political poems, in contrast, feel like standalone, prepared statements; they are more structured--airtight--like a policy stance. But Harris, as a black woman, does not have the luxury of fully separating these parts of herself. Her personal choices are narrowed by political circumstance; her political choices are impacted by personal experience. This messy quality reflects in her poems as the reader sees Harris want to JUST be a person or JUST be a poet--sometimes explicitly--but she cannot, and those elements spill over and into each other. It's an incredible and personal illustration of a generation, where so many people feel the call to action in their day to day lives, but are reluctant to answer.
There are so many things I can say about this excellent book, but here is the gist: Harris's collection is a visceral, masterfully crafted poetic experience. To not read this book is to commit a grave disservice to yourself.
June 30, 2016
(Review to come)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews