Carver: A Life in Poems.

Marilyn Nelson. Carver: A Life in Poems Asheville, NC: Front Street, 2001. 103 pp. $16.95.

When I was a young boy, the triumvirate in music was Marian Anderson, Roland Hayes, and Paul Robeson. In the realm of intellect, sports, and science the kings were, respectively, W. E. B. Du Bois, Joe Louis, and George Washington Carver. Carver alone astonished the world with the simplicity of investigating the peanut. He seemed never to be able to dismiss, or take for granted, the ordinary in the environment that surrounded him. I suspect he knew, as all wise men gradually learn, that the simple and ordinary have the ability continually to astound. In the middle of the twentieth century blacks would come to learn how many of their brothers and sisters were truly gifted, in a wide and ever expanding venue of disciplines.

What astounds me at this moment in history is that George Washington Carver still has the ability to amaze, inspire, and call forth the best in our imagination. This is what has taken place in Marilyn Nelson's brilliantly lyrical Carver: A Life in Poems. In this volume, one discovers Nelson's use of prayers, lyrics, letters, and an incredible application of place and differing voices. Nelson is able to give the reader vivid and sustained images and photographs of those individuals entering, influencing, and exiting the world of George Washington Carver. This book of poems is successful in suggesting that Professor Carver was and remains a gentleman for all seasons.

Marilyn Nelson richly sculpts out Carver's life, beginning with the moment he and his mother were kidnaped by slavers and John Bentley was hired to rescue them. It is ironic that Bentley was only able to bring the sickly infant George back to the Carvers. Nelson informs us that Bentley:

Tracked the bushwhackers
two days south of here
and caught up with them
down in Arkansas....

He was unable to retrieve the mother. She, most likely, had been sold down South, but the sickly infant, "...a bundle of wet rags, / convulsive with fever and shook / by the whooping cough," was rescued and returned to a grateful Mrs. Carver. For his work, Bentley is given the Carvers' best "filly, as reward." It in turn gave birth to a number of colts that became excellent race horses. Early on it appears as if John Bentley is the greater beneficiary.

In a poem titled "Prayer of the Ivory-Handled Knife" Susan Carver apostrophizes to the unknown about how they are to rear these two slave boys, and what type of life can they direct them toward. Here are two of her parental questions:

What would you have us make
of them? What
kind of freedom
can we raise them to?

Here we are confronted with the first of many social dilemmas which are to figure in the young Carver's life. Later in this same poem Mrs. Carver is aware of the special nature of the youngest child. She observes not only his scientific understanding of the natural world, but also his artistic perception of that world:

And our little plant-doctor:
Now he's crushing leaves and berries
and painting sanded boards.
Thank you
for his profusion roses
on our bedroom wall,
for his wildflower bouquet
in the sitting room,
his apples and pears beside the stove.

Early in "Watkins Laundry and Apothecary" Nelson again depicts Carver's understanding of nature and science when she allows Mrs. Watkins to tell the reader:

He helped me with my washings,
brought me roots from the woods
that bleached them white folks' sheets
brighter than sunshine.

Carver's abilities quite literally extend far beyond his age. It is a wonder to observe his philosophical and prophetic nature and to be fortunate enough to stand so close to him and in its midst:

He was the child the good Lord gave
and took away before I got more
than a twinkle of a glimpse...
George was holding a black-eyed Susan,
talking about how the seed
this flower grew from
carried a message from flower
that bloomed a million years ago,
and how this flower
would send a message on
to a flower that was going to bloom
in a million years.
Praise Jesus, I'll never forget it.

There is something exceptionally forceful but quiet about the language Nelson employs. It is inventive yet quiet; it is curious yet self-effacing and unassuming as it presents Dr. Carver's life. The poet is able to sum up the scientist's achievements in effortless language that takes into account not only his abilities but also his physical size. "Drifter" is a poem that seems to do it all. It is an early portrait. Here is the miniature "Drifter" in full:

Something says find out
why rain falls, what makes corn so proud
and squash so humble, the questions
call like a train whistle so at fourteen,
fifteen, eighteen, nineteen still on half-fare,
over the receding landscapes the perceiving self
stares back from the darkening window

This poem is based on a number of imperatives which apparently were not only the building blocks of Dr. Carver's life but also an integral part of his nature.

It is a credit to Ms. Nelson's poetic abilities that she is able to interlock these poems both thematically and musically to show us the lyricism involved in one man's life, as well as the tragic stumbling blocks and pitfalls that he had to work to overcome.

We are as fearful as Carver must have been witnessing a lynching when we encounter the lines "Smoke from a torched deadman, barking laughter / from the cottonwoods at the creek." This is, no doubt, one of the great themes in African American literature, appearing in the work of such distinguished writers as Paul Laurence Dunbar ("The Haunted Oak"), Alice Walker ("The Flowers"), and Richard Wright ("Between the World and Me"). This list only scratches the surface; still the connection, in terms of subject matter, between these works is there.

Ms. Nelson moves with assurance and technique under her palm and a sure and detailed eye which draws all of her images into focus. The music of "The Perceiving Self" repeatedly echoes in this penetrating book of poetry, connecting us not only to heritage and accomplishment, struggle, endurance, and loneliness but also to the wizardry of survival which connects each reader to one of the major unsung male role models, an icon of the twentieth century.

In poem after poem, creatively, this poet demonstrates the same growth and development in both her work and her subject matter. As a young scientist Carver seems to travel the same difficult roads which many creative individuals have been afflicted with. Here is Carver as a domestic: "He's a wizard with a washboard, / a genie of elbow grease and suds." He is a dedicated and hard worker, but he is also that self-reliant individual whom Emerson so faithfully looked for:

He kept to himself, pretty much,
but was always sort of joyous when you met, and humble,
like he'd just been told
the most marvelous, flattering joke.

George Washington Carver was more than a scientist. He was a perceptive, gifted, and moving painter:

He says he paints to reveal truth,
his colors lucent, almost transparent;
sometimes a square inch of his canvas
is enough to break your heart.

Finally, he was an alert individual who was willing to observe and decipher what the coming days might imply. Here Nelson allows the reader to see Carver as:

The perceiving self sit[ting]
with his back against rough bark,
casting ten thousand questions into the future.
As shadows take shape, the curtains part
for the length of the time it takes to gasp,
and behold, the purpose of his
life dawns on him.

What Marilyn Nelson has done in this fine book is nothing less than create art out of the bits and pieces of the singularity of Carver's life. The metaphor is extended to the life Carver led. In the poem "Chemistry 101" we are told: "Carver leads his chemistry class into / the college dump." There, of course, he sees the useful and the important. His students see only uselessness. But it is with the tactic of philosophical questioning that he prods his students until

Two by two, little lights go on.
One by hesitant one, dark hands are raised,
The waters of imagining, their element.

Nelson makes further capital in "Dawn Walk" out of the many duties Dr. Carver assumed in his singularly quiet life. He seems more dedicated to bringing his talents to useful fruition. He wants to make the best of the abilities God has given him. In teaching, the poet allows us to see Carver speaking to

Our first free generation,
the seeds of our promise.
And only two arms, two hands, to legs,
two eyes, one brain, the time allotted,
and Thee.

It is still true: It is not how much time you are granted, but what you do with the time allotted you. It is clear, in these poems, that the teacher helped more than his students who attended the Institute. The poem "From an Alabama Farmer" is written, as a letter, in dialect. We are able to perceive a tone of gratitude and thankfulness for Carver's willingness to share his scientific largesse with the surrounding community. Here is the poem in its entirety because the music and the perception Nelson offers is, quite simply, too beautiful to interrupt or parcel out:

Dere Dr. Carver, I bin folloring
the things I herd you say last planting time.
I give my cow more corn, less cottonseed
and my creme chirns mo better butter. I'm
riting to you today, Sir, jes to tell
you at I furtulize: 800 pounds
to the acur las March. Come harves, well
it were a bompercrop. How did you found
out you coud use swamp mock? I presheate
your anser Dr. Carver by mail soon.
What maid my cotton grow? It do fele grate
to see the swet off your brow corn to bloom.
I want to now what maid my miricle.
Your humbel servint, (name illegible)

The magic of the craft is invisible and awe-inspiring. The voice is natural, and one cannot detect the slightest hint of falseness in a single line of this poem. The control over craft and thought is invigorating. There are other poetic letters like "My Dear Spiritual Boy," written to Jim Hardwick, which evokes a spiritual harmony overlaid with loneliness, and his epistle to Mrs. Hardwick laments his shock concerning Jim's marriage. The poem closes with a line of ultimate despair and old age when the poet writes. We are forced to watch him as "he signs his shaky name and leans back in his chair."

Marilyn Nelson has created a marvelous "life in poems" in this book-length autobiography. There are a variety of elements that recommend it. There is voice and music; there is speech, both written and spoken; there is devotion and commitment; there is the confrontation of the real world; there is the embrace of the imagined and artistic world; but, above all, there is the vision of George Washington Carver fully drawn and realized in poetry.

[c] 2002 Herbert Woodward Martin