Download PDF by Marilyn Nelson: The Cachoeira Tales and Other Poems

Soaring photos, rhythmic language, and wry humor come jointly in those 3 narrative poems that discover go back and forth from an African American historic and social standpoint. A cab experience becomes an grand come upon with the driving force, an beginner physicist whose rules approximately house and time shuttle spark the poet's musings on chutzpah and inventive ambition. a visit to Triolet, a Creole village within the Indian Ocean island kingdom of Mauritius, leads the poet to reflect on the prior and current as she displays at the ironic complexities of the slave alternate and its legacy shared via such a lot of peoples. And in "The Cachoeira Tales," longing to take her relatives on a trip to "some position sanctified by means of the Negro soul," the poet reveals herself in Brazil's Bahia, in addition to a theater director, a jazz musician, a retired advertisement pilot, an activist, a college pupil, and mysterious African American ladies whom they meet alongside the way in which. In rhymed couplets, each one pilgrim tells a narrative, and the result's a rollicking, sensual exploration of spirit and group, with a nod to Chaucer and to standard Trickster stories.

Using her striking skill to coach and encourage, Marilyn Nelson demonstrates the facility of go back and forth to remodel our imaginations. we've got lengthy recognized that commute broadens; in those poems, it additionally deepens and makes wiser.

Joined pores and skin to epidermis, we moved like molecules
in the good, very unlikely miracle
of surroundings, swaying to the music,
all eyes at the level, all hearts attuning
themselves in appealing polyrhythmy,
one shaking booty. On one facet of me
a younger guy danced; I felt his muscled warmth
flow into mine, his natural, sexual strength.
On my different aspects younger ladies danced, whose curves
bumped me softly, dancing with out reserve,
hands waving within the air, freeing scent
fragrant as nard. We danced in reverent,
silent assent to the praise-song of drums.
-- from "Olodum" of "The Cachoeira Tales"