'This Is the Honey'

 I mentioned the new anthology This Is the Honey, which introduced me to Nicholas Goodly, an interesting young poet.

I think, but am not certain, that Goodly’s “R&B Facts” was my big discovery in this anthology. But there were others:

• Nikki Grimes, “Where I’m From.” The poem begins

I’m from fried okra, catfish and knish,

black-eyed peas, and pickles from the barrel …

If you are a child of a diaspora, you grow up with children of other diasporas.

• Nate Marshall, “Harold’s Chicken Shack #35.” His dad is teaching him the pleasures of fried gizzards with fries. The poem includes the memorable observation that “good sauce is equality/ among fowl.”

• Sharan Strange, “Mule.” The speaker is a 9-year-old girl watching her grandfather die. The poem beautifully contrasts a child’s innocence with the toughness — a virtue, but not a pretty one — that it took to survive Jim Crow.

• Chanda Feldman, “Demonstration.” A schoolgirl goes to the county extension office to watch her mother, a home economics agent, demonstrate the proper way to make preserves. This poem is quietly told. The image is sharp, photographic. The poem is a compressed short story.

The anthology includes famous poets: Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Natasha Trethewey, Terrance Hayes. It includes famous poets whose work I particularly like: Yusef Komunyakaa, Toi Derricotte, Cornelius Eady. But the best parts of the anthology are these introductions to new poets. I read, marveled and felt better about the world.

• Source: This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander; New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2024.