Horse in the Dark: Poems

The circumstances are harsh. The poems are excruciatingly beautiful. The young protagonist is aware of guns, bullsnakes, hollyhawks, guns, a cowboy's son, and that her brown mare, Trixie, lives on her grandmother's land a few hundred miles east. In section two, the poems move to East Texas and broader experiences: fishing, peaches, a body to sustain, a race, a gender, the precarious security of a grandmother doing her best to keep evil spirits away. In section three the poems continue to scratch the East Texas landscape, the measure of memory, and the limits of language. The poetry, casting even further out in relationships, blooms out to remind that "Every man [is] his own horse." The poet adjures Chiron, "you were meant to sing, / so lay down your bow." An "Ars Poetica" in the fourth section opens with "I keep rifles in the closet" and concludes with "I know the value of my property. / Ungloved, I place the barbed wire.""Horse in the Dark," just like "Blue-Tail Fly" before it, attests toFrancis's graceful state of dignified self-possession informedby sorrows, brutal violence, and hidden desires. Now a favorite on my shelf.

My local library carries recent African American literature that otherwise would be difficult to find including this book of poetry by Vievee Francis, "Horse in the Dark", which received the 2010 Cave Camen Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize. This prize, offered every other year, is awarded to second books by African American poets. Francis currently lives in the Detroit area but grew up in rural Texas. Francis published an earlier book of poetry, "Blue Tail Fly" in 2006. She is coming to the publication of books of poetry in middle age."Horse in the Dark" is largely autobiographical and recounts Francis' childhood years in Texas. The family moved a great deal, from west to east Texas, but always in isolated rural areas. Her book has the feel of dirt, grit, animals, heat, and toughness. Some of the poems are written in traditional styles, others are brief prose poems while others are modernist. Francis makes frequent reference to classical mythology, especially to Ovid and myths involving human-animal transformation.Francis writes about west Texas with its lack of trees and oppressive sun. Woods and loblolly pine predominate in the poems about east Texas. Francis describes her family, including father, mother, and grandmother. A poem titled "Still Life with another Grandfather, Masons, and a Pie Tin under the Bed" is one of several that describes the poet's aging grandmother. In this poem, Francis describes her second marriage, to a man ten years her senior. When he died, "He left everything to his children. He left her nothing but alone."Francis describes rural schools in which she frequently was the only African American child. The poems also describe the strong undercurrent of race prejudice she felt in the early 1970's,Most of the poems involve Francis' reflections on places, land and especially animals. The picture of the land is barren and unsentimental, as an aptly titled poem, "Anti-Pastoral" where she writes: "I hate this measure/ of memory, the constant return to the creek, the field,/the sundering South. I want release from the pasture/ of my youth, from its cows and cobs in the mouth."The animal poems feature creatures such as the "Bull Snake", hogs and pigs, anteaters, and sea horses, but the most common figure is of a horse. The author reflects on her own human nature and on how it emerged from animality. Horse and human are frequently melded together in the poems, as in the title poem, "Horse in the Dark" and it is sometimes difficult to tell the species apart. The final visionary poem in the collection "Pegasus" is about the mythical creature: "the horse is the rider" who "runs toward who knows where,/forgets itself,/flies on its legs."In a sonnet titled "On the Way to Round Rock -- 2003" Francis aptly describes in a way that brought back memories the environs of a Texas city that I have visited several times and come to know. It is the poem in the collection to which I could best respond from my own experience. The poem begins:"An ice machine rusts in the middle of a field.A bull skull. A dog too old, too weary to run.The boy on the tractor watches butterflies floattoward the half-dead trees along CR 122.""Horse in the Dark" is a small, off-the beaten path rough collection that I was fortunate to find and read. The theme is unusual and many of the poems succeed. The book will interest adventurous readers of modern American poetry.Robin Friedman