You may not know poet Roxane Beth Johnson, but she has you in mind. "I write for you, whoever you are: the reader," she said emphatically. "I love the reader. I aim to please -- seriously!" In that spirit, Johnson's recent book, Jubilee, is a collection inviting the reader to share vivid memories from her own history.
The book won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Johnson has also won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Prize in Poetry and a 2007 Pushcart Prize. Her second book, Black Crow Dress, is forthcoming from Alice James Books. Here, she shares four new poems.
Johnson often writes about her childhood, which was spent in San Jose, Calif., "long before it was Silicon Valley, when it was still kind of sleepy with many orchards and suburbs."
Johnson was first exposed to poetry hearing Biblical psalms as a child, which she describes as "pure poetry." She also started writing young.
"I remember writing a story, called 'The Magic Mouse,' which thrilled my mother. The positive attention from her was all I needed to keep going."
Her poems often reflect her African American and Italian heritage. They also capture a dark period of American history.
"The terms 'octoroon' and 'quintroon' were used in law and government to provide a code of discrimination against blacks, particularly fair-skinned blacks of mixed races, she said. "An octoroon is one-quarter black and a quintroon is one-eighth black. Using these terms was a way of saying, 'even if only your great grandmother ten times removed is black, you are still tainted.'"
But Johnson is also a strong believer in the power of poetry to transform something grotesque into something beautiful.
"When I was working on 'Octoroon,' I just riffed on the idea that 'octoroon,' when stripped of its meaning, sounds like the name of some kind of magnificent bird. I liked imagining my life as that kind of bird, both free and terrible. Molting sounds like a real drag, but we all do it in some way. Having to let go of our beauty or comfort for a time, being hideous and in pain, and then becoming free again; becoming the self, only fresher and ready for more."
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Octoroon
Called also an octoroon. As a girl, thought that was some bird. Purple feathered lyrebird with a parrot-hard beak. I became the bird in the backyard, behind mother's gladioli where tiny frogs scattered over mud. Wings spouted from shoulders like a backwards beard. Some bearded iris. Toes hardened, curved into claws. Could I fly? Was I for show like a dumb grouse? Took years to uncover. Meantime, I molted. Colored myself in. As an octoroon, by nature nested far from home but longed for it always hence my terrible song. Getting older, adapt to the air and become like other birds, but odd. The tips of my feathers incendiary. When I finally fly toward home, I'll set that old city on fire.
Quintaroon
All numbers is what went on. My grandparents color was counted and I came up short enough. I was calibrated, metronomed, watched for rising mercury. I'm talking about fading, too. Everyone hoping I might turn white. Color of a no shade desert, that was me. A Catherine Wheel gone dark, kaput. I was only a Quintroon to the end of my girlhood, when I began to filter like sand down a drain. When my one-sixteenth died of dementia, I lost my legitimacy. But, as the earth erodes the sediment, it also grows dark. I looked like any old seed, but was the one that became the tree.
Half Like Them
Over many years, I have dreamed away my color and turned inside out, like the wet machinery of an orange. I'm all yard; the sycamores are my likeness. Their leaves list like sleeping bats. Hose in hand, I drink as water pours down my Easter dress. Jesus bled to death infront of a crowd just like this: neighborhood White kids with their swollen tongues, their throatcords already phosphorus. Why do they call me nigger when I am half like them? Ask questions and see answers everywhere. The shade sings. The tree's roots claw seaward; sheds its bark in great white sheets. My fingers molt hawk claws. An eye on every feather.