Philip Bryant. Sermon on a Perfect Spring Day.

Minneapolis: New Rivers P, 1998. 95 pp. $12.95.

Bryant's manuscript begins with the very brief title poem describing what appears to be a congregation which speaks in tongues, or a church of the less than literate, as they shout "Gladiolus" after the completion of the sermon--instead of "Glorious," one would presume. The narrator takes advantage of this scene in order to make an observation: one of complete rapture, where the relevance of the external world is irrelevant. Only the glory of the scene remains. We, then, progress to a poem which catalogues the amenities of the poor: "the intimate smell that belongs (to them)"; "broken pop bottles (in the streets)"; and "Naugahyde-laminated family / Bible(s)." "Some Notes on My Origins" continues in this vein with descriptions of the poet's immediate surroundings. "They were all on the lam, every sin- / gle rare animal, plant, and bird you could think of. They heard the / Southside was a good place to lay low--be cool." "Independence Day 1960" tries to present a history, of the Negro, presumably, in stating: "Around the dawn of time, / before black people were / ever conceived of or invented, / a thousand fires / would / be lit on the Southside of Chicago." This is the history of Negroes living the only way they knew how, with seemingly no influence from the outside (Caucasoid) world. In the following poem, the word nigger is "The Forbidden Fruit," which "still had the taste and look / of that sweet red fruit / just bitten into" when it is spoken in the poem.

"Dancing with Aunt Janey" is one of the many poems where jazz becomes the canvas upon which the poet paints a portrait of his early life, where people are forces of nature: "Aunt Janey, in a tight black dress on New Years Day, / was doing the shimmy and dancing / the black bottom / as her enormous buttocks whipped about / like the black and starless night sky / in late, windblown March." Aunt Janey seems to be one of those forces of nature in the book, as she appears in numerous poems. Vices also make the list of "forces" which appear here, as in "Serious Drinking": "The single fact of the world was suddenly / film-documentary-gray, as gray as old / Aunt Lil shuffling / through gray dawn / to make milky gray coffee, / talking gray words that / stuck to the end of her / thick, chalky-gray tongue / that filled the empty gin / bottles and cocktail glasses / with gray ashy chinks...." The prefigured world seems to be one where our expectations don't match that reality, where we're not getting it right, as in the poem "Stargazing," where Uncle Charles "points to the pattern of / bullet holes in the walls / (like) some / cockeyed farmer / from Kandiyohi / County / in central Minnesota / showing his / nephew / the constellation Orion / when in fact / he is pointing / to Ursa / the bear." Many of these poems of childhood reckoning follow in this same vein; there exists a world of pleasures and pains which seems barely to make sense given the facts. In these declarative poems, in a book without sections, the poet speaks of the past and possibly of a nostalgia for that time of not knowing as much as he now does. As in "Soulfood," where "Turnip greens, collards, and mustards--all should achieve sainthood / in the next century," that young world is one to be sung over, and sung again.

Bryant celebrates the well-worn markers of black life: soul food, large women, religion, jazz, alcohol abuse, and gleaning moments of clarity from poverty. "In Late Fall" is one brief example: "I get goose bumps / when I see that woman's wide goose down hips; / if she comes any / closer, I /just might sprout wings / and fly south with her / for the winter." Too often, the poet does not resist the pull of cliched phrases--as with "naked as a jaybird" in the poem "Looking at Your Body" or "coming up roses" in the poem "The Glue that Held Everything Together." As the poet states in "Poetry," "No shrinking violet here-- / thank you, / or politely served / gin and tonics on a silver tray; / it should be 100 proof-- / straight, no chaser. / This is our only hope, / to cradle this / hapless, hungry thing; / feed it, nurture it, / and finally / give it a name." Bryant does just that, giving a name to all his childhood recollections as he attempts to save the past.

Anthony Butts

Carnegie-Mellon University