Sapphire to Suhair: Poetry on Family and Home

In the poem “In My Father’s House” Sapphire takes her insides and turns them inside out. The piece is brave and confessional. In describing her shock of violence toward another living being as an adult, she is reminded of what has been done to her by her father as a girl. The four vignettes or stories capture the pain of her childhood growing up in an abusive, patriarchal family. In the first vignette she describes how this cycle of abuse was passed on by her father’s father when she says,

“he told me his father put his foot on his neck

& beat him until his nose bled.

he left home when he was 14,

an Aries full of blind light

trying to wrap barbed wire around the wind.”

On a lighter note, I enjoyed the nostalgic, richly descriptive poems “Chilo’s Daughters Sing for Me in Cuba” and “Mexican Almuerzo in New England” by Richard Blanco in The Wind Shifts. I recently wrote a poem in a similar block style format and felt it allowed me to have a free verse in a new way. I also found it interesting that out of all of Blanco’s poems the ones that resonated the most with me were written in this way. In both these poems he is a master at using food to describe all the senses and bring the reader into his world. What I appreciate the most from “Chilo’s Daughters Sing for Me in Cuba” is Blanco’s repetition of the word “They” which gives precedence to the people he describes in Cuba who after preparing a plentiful meal begin singing in praise and gratitude for the food, history, family, and land.

In “Mexican Almuerzo in New England” Blanco paints a beautiful homage to a woman named Marina in color, scent, texture, temperature and taste. She creates “home” in a foreign place for her son, through cooking and special decorations like papel picado. Blanco writes,

“It is the best she can do in this strange kitchen which

Sele has tried to disguise with papel picado colored tissue

paper displaying our names in pinata pink, maiz yellow, and Guadalupe

green....”

These poems are very personal, nostalgic, sensual and hold cultural significance and perseverance specific to Indian and mestizo culture that I can fully relate to.

From Inclined to Speak Lisa Suhair Majaj’s poem “I remember My Father’s Hands” quietly shows another intimate kinship, but focusing on the relationship of a Palestinian father and daughter as told through the memory of a father’s hands. It was amazing how Majaj shared vivid glimpses of stories in such few words. In these nine couplets as reader we experience spirituality, death, work, childhood, love, and heritage. The rhythm held nicely together through her repetition of the word “because,” beginning each couplet.

What ties all these pieces together here is evident, family. For the good or the bad these relations have strong influence in our lives and in poetry evoke a multitude of experiences and emotions. In telling we can also often further our own personal development.