{"id":840,"date":"2023-05-07T04:34:15","date_gmt":"2023-05-07T04:34:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=840"},"modified":"2023-05-07T04:34:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-07T04:34:15","slug":"cruel-realities-racism-through-lyric-in-dior-j-stephenss-cruel-cruel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2023\/05\/07\/cruel-realities-racism-through-lyric-in-dior-j-stephenss-cruel-cruel\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruel Realities: Racism through Lyric in Dior J. Stephens\u2019s Cruel\/Cruel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

reviewed by D.D. Deischer-Eddy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Poetry | Single-author collection. 104 Pages. Nightboat Books, 2023. Available here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

Colored pages are not new to me. So when I was handed a copy of Cruel\/Cruel<\/em>, I flipped through the section of black pages\u2014they are fully black with white words\u2014to sate my curiosity. Naturally, I had to smell the pages, and I did. Then I smelled them again. Unable to put my finger on the smell, I passed the book around to friends, the consensus being that it was the smell of ink. A lot of ink. Every time someone walked into the room while I was reading, I would stick my nose in those darkened pages and inhale, then cough. There was so much ink on those pages, the scent overwhelmed me the way a Sharpie does when held too close to your face. \u201cWhat did you expect?\u201d I was asked each time. I knew to expect the strong, almost pungent odor, but I inhaled it anyway. I think that experience\u2014coughing while deeply inhaling the scent of the pages\u2014sums up my experience reading this collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I am an English student (soon to graduate) and an occasional poet (I try things), I do not consider myself a poetry expert. I will admit to completely missing references in the classics or well-known poems. That does not change the fact that while I cannot always articulate my thoughts about poetry, I know how poems make me feel. And oh, did Cruel\/Cruel<\/em> make me feel<\/em>. In three sections and less than one hundred pages, Dior J. Stephens did what usually takes novelists much longer to do. What did he do? I\u2019m still not sure. I even have a sticky note on page 25 that reads \u201cI have no idea what is happening \ud83d\ude0a.\u201d Lyric poetry is not usually my wheelhouse, but Stephens helped me fall back in love with the form.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ride through the sections is enjoyable, a museum of thoughts. Every single page is arranged just so. There are patterns of recurring words, and there are vaguely hieroglyphic symbols on the section title pages. Throughout the collection, Stephens shows off marvels of clever wordplay, with my favorite being \u201cleft, PLIGHT<\/em>\/left, left,\u201d reminiscent of a marching call. Then there are the less playful examples, such as the \u201csickle cell\/ular devices,\u201d invoking the blood <\/span>disorder and phones in one breath. Whether playful or not, there\u2019s an undeniable skill to how many words Stephens can break or replace. Another amusing one includes \u201cjocks\/traps,\u201d or \u201cjockstraps,\u201d followed a few pages after by alliteration in the line \u201csyncope ain\u2019t synced in since the\/sunday\u2026\u201d The first section of Cruel\/Cruel<\/em> relies on the repetition of \u201conce again,\u201d and the poem \u201cUYP 3\u201d invokes the Arabic phrase \u201cinshallah\u201d throughout. Stephens constantly proves his skill in subverting and playing with language, which extends to the way the poems are arranged.<\/span><\/p>\n

No poem is the same within this collection, in words or arrangement. Even within sections, no arrangement truly repeats. One poem may take up the top right corner of the page, while the next may hug the left side. Some poems even take up the whole page with their stanzas. Stephens seems to experiment with something writer Brenna Womer recently said at a reading I attended: he explores how to take up<\/em> space rather than fit in<\/em> the space. One page, in a line starting with \u201cfirecracker encores,\u201d does a staircase effect down the page, emulating an arc that a lit firecracker may take. For this collection, arrangement is just as important as the words contained within the poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

It behooves anyone who plans to read this collection to understand the importance of race to the collection. The third section mainly focuses on this theme, but there are inklings spread throughout the preceding sections. Stephens talks of \u201cancestry lined\/with diamonds in\/ivory blood\u201d and making \u201ca white man cry at\/the\/waterfall of\/their\/exception\u201d in different poems, but they all contribute to an overarching conversation on race. There are even entire poems that meditate on it, such as \u201cUYP 9\u201d. The left-facing page ends with \u201chow do you swim?\u201d and the right page simply says, close to the spine, close enough I nearly missed it, \u201cwe don\u2019t.<\/em>\u201d Whether this references the former exclusion of Black people from swimming pools or the transatlantic slave trade, I cannot say for sure. Even when discussing an age-old topic, Stephens finds new ways to<\/span><\/p>\n

approach it, making each new invocation unique and original. Though he is not the first poet to discuss these issues, he is certainly the first to approach them in this particular way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of all the poems in this book, of all the words that made me feel things, I think \u201cUYP 12\u201d really takes the cake. It is the final poem of this book, utilizing multiple pages. Every stanza has a different form and a different shape, all starting with \u201cwanna.\u201d What does the speaker wanna do? They \u201cwanna see Floyd\/breathing and\/don\u2019t wanna talk about it.\u201d They \u201cwanna stop feeling; white gaze white gaze.\u201d They \u201cwanna give\/every black body\/a medal\u2014\/&\/a collection\/of\/plastic bags\/from under\/the sink\/(you\u2019ll need\/them<\/em>)\u201d. (I wrote \u201cgoddamn\u201d next to this line, thinking immediately of all the innocent Black people shot by police.) They \u201cwanna see\/smooth skies\/lined,\u201d and they \u201cwanna see\/twist be-\/come shout<\/em>.\u201d Stephens expresses the urges, worries, and frustrations of a Black American citizen as desires for change. He does not hold any punches, taking advantage of his experimental lyric forms to lure the reader into facing hard topics directly. There is no mercy here, though there is a hint of celebration in lines such as \u201cwanna wear scandalous skivvies\/for an audience of one.\u201d Cruelty versus celebration. The bluntness may be cruel, especially for white readers like myself, but it is necessary. Only when we\u2019re faced with the issue can we even begin to do something about it, wanna<\/em> do something about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

When I finished this book, I prostrated on the floor of the English department suite, as I often do when overwhelmed with feeling or feeling silly. I was not feeling silly at the end of this collection. I was feeling anything but. I may have only just discovered Dior J. Stephens\u2019s work, but I can honestly say he might be one of my favorite poets I\u2019ve read. With all the brutal honesty of Claudia Rankine and the playfulness of Ross Gay, Stephens\u2019s declaration that \u201ca poet is a poem is a keeper\u201d is my new motto. This one\u2019s definitely a keeper.<\/span><\/p>\n

D.D. Deischer-Eddy is a senior English & Creative Writing major at Lebanon Valley College. She has an unhealthy obsession with anime and marching band, but when she’s not playing alto saxophone, she is often reading or writing. Her collection of books is getting dangerously close to library status. For the past year, she has been working on a collection of short stories that center around retellings of Greek myths as her Creative Writing honors project.<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by D.D. Deischer-Eddy Colored pages are not new to me. So when I was handed a copy of Cruel\/Cruel, I flipped through the section of black pages\u2014they are fully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}