Title: Travelling Mercies
Author: Lorna Goodison
Reviewed by: Sheilah Garcia-Bisnott
TRAVELLING MERCIES is the title of Lorna Goodison's most recent of seven books of poetry. The poem which gives its name to the collection is a plea for mercies, and fittingly leads the journey through the layers, avenues, experiences of life (in particular the Caribbean experience), whether on "walk foot, 'silver gaulins', or slave ships; above ground or under; in mind or spirit, in time or through time.
We begin on a 'Pearl morning when the Blue Mountain contracted and stamped themselves, imprimatur, across your forehead.'
The traveller moves through the day and through experiences at once simple and complex. Later she becomes 'careless and wanton', and on the 'number 5 bus' we are in a company of a wine-bibber who is inviting 'anyone who so desires to dine with him'. There is 'gold rain..../leaking out from the vault of his rented room/lining his pockets', and he is deaf to the advice of the 'reasonable woman' to put away the money for a rainy day. 'I can pay, I will pay', he says, 'and whosoever will may come.'
Here and elsewhere the social and religious environment from which the poem emerges provides different experiences for different readers - especially for the unhurried, as this is not a collection to be breezed through, but thoughtful reading produces a pleasantly satisfying experience.
Partly the collection takes us on a homing journey, a voyage toward union -- in which the speaking voice is at the same time personal, cultural, universal. Early it speaks of 'What we carried that carried us', reflecting on that historic transatlantic journey that created the present Caribbean, and into which the poet weaves threads of history and culture in an intriguing interpretation and expression of the past in the present.
The living converter woman of Green Island is part of that journey -- the tripe she is cleaning symbolising history's long story that is 'coiled and sectioned', and her voice singing of comfort to the 'dark flesh of cargo' of people sold out.
Quashie is also on the journey. To appreciate the poet's witty, poignant response to Thomas Carlyle's 'Nigger Question' and to the legacy of the institution, one has to read the entire poem. A few lines indicate, and provide as well, an interesting feel for this poet's handling to wonderful effect of the two languages which represent, define, characterise the contending groups in the society, giving expression to condition, attitude, tone, levels of meaning:
'It was bad magic made with pen and ink.
employed by Thomas Carlyle to ask
the Nigger Question: Can England afford
to give pumpkin-eating Quashie freedom?
Bookless Quashie had no opportunity
to make said Carlyle guess and spell
how water find way to pumpkin belly
And the paper that claimed that Queen Victoria
has given Quashie, as of first of August, full free
...impaled and jooked
upon a long spike pointed like Q's story.
And yea verily, that was our first book.'
But the voice in these poems is not in nor even from history. This is not yesterday's journey. It is today's experience, and the focus is less on events and people than on the spirit of a people. And there is an element of timelessness, and a sense of all-inclusiveness which broadens even private experiences. This too is achieved considerably in the workings of the language, cultural symbolisms and images of the people into the formal style which is predominantly that used by the speaking voice.
On the way, there are pauses for reflection or for elements of celebration as we consider landmark items, persons, places. 'About the Tamarind' is, for example, partly a litany of the favours of the tamarind tree, with the thought: 'Sour and sweet,/ I came with the enslaved across the seas to bear for you / when force-ripe capricious crops fail.'
Some poems are exploration into concerns and contradictions at the heart of the cultural, political, religious experience. A range of styles and treatment supports the diverse experiences and responses. 'Moonlight City,' might almost be considered a song of protest in which the voice raises questions surrounding the fact that Kingston's dungle can be called 'Moonlight City', that 'Lupus can assume the mask of a butterfly', and 'Judas found it necessary to kiss Jesus'. And then through a process of challenge to mind and soul, the voice leads indeed to the disturbing awareness of
'.... how a landfill
can be called moonlight city, how Iscariot
was must and bound to kiss his friend Christ
And why Lupus, the wasting spawn of wolves,
Can assume the winged mask of butterflies.'
Later we reflect on 'Poor Mrs Lot who is, of course, 'Lot's hard-ears wife.' 'Like you, she should have cried/as she left, not daring to look back'. And in a creative recollection of Dante's Inferno, the journey takes us through the bowels of the earth. Here 'We buck up a procession of duppies shuffling below the banking', and come face to face with the punishments for arrogance, and self-love, then attend to the lesson of the old teacher to his pupil, the poet -
'Hear him: 'Follow your guiding star, for in all good life
I experienced I learned this one thing that's true. What is fi you, can not be un-fi you."
Myriad topical thoughts also concerning issues in relation to country and personal family are explored in style as intricate as the thought. Poems such as 'Miles in Berlin' 'I am Weary of All Winters Mother', and one in the picture of 'My island like/a swimming turtle/surfaces in the fishtank/of the television', demonstrate.
Our travels come to a pleasing end in a powerful poem with echoes of children's voices in the popular singing game "bam chi chi lala", mingled with details that recall cultural legacies and dignified, modest living. They include symbols such as the ubiquitous Singer sewing machine, which for many of us growing up in the period recalled represented domesticity, productivity, maternal propriety. But it does not end here. The journey takes us into reflection on that historic ancestral travel from Guinea (whence came the grandmother of the poet who, in the tone of this collection, represents matriarch of all) and into self freedom, self-expression, productivity, sovereignty.
Travelling Mercies is a sensitive and refreshing exploration of ourselves, experienced through brilliantly creative poetry.
'Bam chi chi lala
Angels dance rocksteady
On the head of a common pin
pleasant Sunday evening'
Publishers: Ian Randle Publishers
