Made To Explode

The first poem is about Tater Tots, and the second poem is about "buying weapons," so I definitely encountered the unexpected in Made to Explode, by Sandra Beasley (W.W. Norton, 2021). And then it all came together in "Einstein, Midnight," one of several prose poems in the book, in the sentence, "Anything, in the right hands, can be made to explode." Many details of history here, including how the poet's personal history intersects with American history. In "My Whitenesses," I learned what the epithet cracker means and found these three pithy lines:

     My performative strip
     of self, still
     trashing up the place.

Jam-packed with meaning. And in "Monticello Peaches," a poem about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings and her brothers, I learned the difference between cling and freestone peaches. It's hard to bear the poem "Black Death Spectacle," about Emmett Till. "Kiss Me," about Ruth Bader Ginsburg attending the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, makes me never want to see it, alas, and to wish again she were still alive. Oh, how "Winter Garden Photograph" hit me in the heart, with the words "Carl died. Life is over" written on a calendar that survives grief. And "Lazarus" is a glorious poem in the grand tradition of cat poems that makes me miss my cat, all my cats. Ah, so it is a Blue Monday in the blog, and another Poetry Someday in pursuit of the Sealey Challenge.