Midland: Poems
Reading the sensuous poetry of Dawes, one's first impression is of immersion in the atmosphere of the Caribbean, "the stench of wisteria crawling its pale purple/ path through a dying swamp." (Born in Ghana, Dawes grew up in Jamaica and now teaches at the University of South Carolina.) Ultimately, however, Midland takes the reader on an autobiographical journey to exile and self-discovery. Dawes is less concerned with reggae than with the need to speak the truth about "the generation that understood the smell/ of burning flesh." The 11-page title poem, "Midland," a "dialect of ire" unfolding like "the hung man dangling/ from a live oak," addresses the burden of "ash and tar of a Sumter lynching" with fortitude. In graphic language, he insists that one look beneath "affinities of skin, sin, and suffering" to the roots of a brutal inheritance. Awarded Ohio University's Hollis Summers Poetry Prize 2000, this book superimposes landscapes of Africa, Jamaica, and the United States, transforming the poetry of protest into a compassionate search for the "dusty graves" of his ancestors. These poems form "hieroglyphs of belonging" that help us come to terms with a complex heritage of intolerance and progress.DFrank Allen, Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PACopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.