12/19/2022
Poet Smith presents an affecting collection of blackout poems—pieces developed by redacting sections of an existing work to create something new—using passages from George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo, which the author notes was chosen due to the work “eerily articulating the despair I held.” In an opening call to action that reverberates throughout the rest of the collection, Smith implores the reader to light a “conscience flame in honor of those killed by violence” and carry that flame “into a more just future.” Several pieces are named for victims of unjust killings, including Ahmad Arbery, Tamir Rice, and Breonna Taylor. Smith’s clever use of blackout poetry works as a visual counterpart for the book’s themes surrounding resistance against erasure while examining the close-knit bonds between family members and their deceased loved ones, such as Trayvon Martin and his mother in “Sybrina Fulton” (“Please know/ that you were a joy”), and serving as appeals to lawmakers, as in “Mr. Politician” (“We are/ angry,/ our hopes/ dead”). Written in response to the murder of George Floyd, according to the author’s introduction, this touching memorial to the Black lives lost to systemic racism is a rousing homage to those protesting in their honor, who refuse to let these deaths be in vain. Photographs feature throughout; a conversation between Smith and Saunders concludes. Ages 14–up. (Jan.)
"I love this tremendously skillful, timely, and dazzling repurposing of passages of my novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Crystal Simone Smith has, with her amazing ear and heart, found, in that earlier grief, a beautiful echo for our time." — George Saunders, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December
"How profoundly fitting that these elegies for lost sons and daughters be structured as subtractive blackout poems. Crystal Smith has created a collection not only reflective of our grief but worthy of our loss."
— Carole Boston Weatherford, Coretta Scott King Award winner for Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre.
“Crystal Simone Smith is one of the most vibrant, clear-eyed, and gifted poets writing today, and Dark Testament could not be a more necessary or important response to the fractured world in which we find ourselves. Smith shines a light and raises her bright voice, one that connects history to the present—timelessness and timeliness—and gives us the gift of remembering these harrowing losses, these beautiful lives. She testifies, and I can’t wait to hear a chorus of amens sung in response.”
— Haven Kimmel, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy, Orville: A Dog Story, and Kaline Klattermaster’s Treehouse
“From the wellspring of a fictional text on Abraham Lincoln, poet Crystal Simone Smith emancipates words, phrases, and snatched-up lines to celebrate the tragic lives of those enslaved by racism, stupidity, and the brutal reality of the system of American policing that can be to Black and Brown alike a Dante’s hell. These trigger(ed)-collages, excavated from an existing text, teach us that language like breathing belongs to everyone, and its elasticity is as resilient and tenuous as Blackness and being. Dark Testament is a multi-layered, symphonic meditation-conversation breathing life into what we witness and must remember. What Smith carves from these black-and-white found erasures etches its way into the (un)conscious/conscience of a nascent nation still grappling with its original sin.”
— Tony Medina, poet and author of I Am Alfonso Jones and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy
“It has never been the case that death has no voice. And these poems, by Crystal Simone Smith, remind us of this—making the case not just that the memories of Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, and Oscar Grant matter, but that they might say of the world is always far more nuanced and complicated than we might imagine. What Smith has been able to do with these poems is compelling.”
— Reginald Dwayne Betts, lawyer and poet, author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison and Felon
"Smith’s clever use of blackout poetry works as a visual counterpart for the book’s themes surrounding resistance against erasure while examining the close-knit bonds between family members and their deceased loved ones, such as Trayvon Martin and his mother in “Sybrina Fulton”, and serving as appeals to lawmakers, as in “Mr. Politician” (“We are/ angry,/ our hopes/ dead”)." — Publisher's Weekly
"A compelling and thoughtful read, and a great introduction to blackout poetry." — School Library Journal
"Beautiful, thought-provoking, and sometimes haunting, this erasure poetry speaks of tragedies and violence that are all-too common in Black communities and the anger that accompanies their presence." — School Library Journal
01/01/2023
Gr 9 Up—Blackout poems created from George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo express the howling rage and grief of the loss of Black lives and the call to action for change. In blackout poetry, the creator blacks out most of the words from an existing text, and the remaining words become the poem. This collection includes poems that are mostly named after victims of police violence and white supremacy; some are named after phrases and movements, such as #BLM. The introduction explains the creation of the poems, then the book is divided into two parts; Part One ends with color photographs of memorials and artwork to victims. The first poem, "No Justice, No Peace," reads "If such things as goodness and brotherhood and redemption exist, and may be attained, these must…require…the vanishing of the heartless oppressor….We are dead, I said….no more—". This short book ends with a conversation between Saunders and Smith in which they discuss their writing processes, what the "bardo" is, and more. Readers do not need to be familiar with Lincoln in the Bardo to understand the poems. Seared with emotional pain and truth, these poems use grief to provide context for the Black Lives Matter movement. VERDICT A compelling and thoughtful read, and a great introduction to blackout poetry. A strong first purchase for libraries.—Tamara Saarinen
2022-10-26
Smith offers a collection of blackout poems honoring victims of anti-Black violence using text from George Saunders’ award-winning Lincoln in the Bardo (2017).
The poet shares in her introduction that as the mother of Black sons, when George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery were murdered, she “found the agony crushing” and “struggled to navigate it.” The poems utilize passages from Saunders’ experimental novel, which Smith was reading in May 2020, to reflect on the lives and deaths of Floyd, Arbery, Philando Castile, Rodney King, and others. Except for Aiyanna Jones, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor, the focus is on the killing of boys and men, although some poems speak from the perspectives of victims’ mothers. An entry from the point of view of Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother, reads “I shall take away from here this resolve: / no more. // Dear boy, / That is a promise.” Another standout is “White Witnesses”: “Much that was New & Strange & / Unnerving had occurr’d this night. We / watched it all unfold from On-High: safe, separate, & Free- / the way we liked it.” Photos of murals and memorials honoring some victims are moving while providing necessary emotional space for readers. Other poems raise questions, as when the narrator of “Black Witness” says they were “still too under siege myself to care” about the identity of the victim of an overheard act of violence, or when Eric Garner is described as being rendered “a weak passive child.”
Heartfelt, if uneven. (author’s note, conversation between Smith and George Saunders) (Poetry. 14-adult)
