Lexicon is a Black Female Poet's Love Letter to Language and Her Craft

A note to the reader:

This book review doesn’t read like my usual book reviews because, to be honest, I didn’t write it for this blog. Over a year ago, I pitched a review of Lexicon by Allison Joseph to a well-respected literary magazine. The pitch was accepted, I turned in my draft, and I worked closely with the editor on edits, the final form of which you’ll see as you continue to read. I was even paid for it.

Then… nothing. The review never ran. I didn’t pursue it because, although it would have been nice to have a byline in this magazine, the editor was not the greatest to work with. I pitched a book review and she accepted, but I soon learned that what she actually wanted was in-depth textual analysis. As regular readers of this blog know, I don’t enjoy textual analysis and I don’t think the casual reader does either. I got burned out on in-depth textual analysis when I was getting my literature degree and I haven’t cared to return to that staunch academic way of writing. And frankly, the amount I was paid for this piece was paltry compared to the amount of work I did trying to make this editor happy.

Even so, I already did the work and I think it’s a damn shame that Lexicon by Allison Joseph didn’t get the attention it deserved, in part through factors completely beyond her control. So here’s my piece, textual analysis and all, as it would have appeared had that magazine chosen to publish it as we agreed.

With 17 previous poetry books and chapbooks to her name, professor and director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University, Dr. Allison Joseph is soon to be the author of 18 books of poetry. Her newest volume, Lexicon, is set to release on April 27th, 2021, from Red Hen Press. The title is apt since Joseph gives readers a new way of looking at poetic forms. The lexicon isn't in words themselves but the artful manipulation of traditional forms of poetry. Joseph's poetry is the embodiment of the adage "learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist." 

Like many poetry collections––for example, Citizen by Claudia Rankine, Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, and Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts––Lexicon has something vital and urgent to say; an uncompromising will to be understood both as artists and as humans at the intersections of their identities and all it means to live in their specific body, in our specific world. However, it's also dedicated to finding playfulness in the everyday––a welcome respite during this time of widespread suffering as a result of the pandemic. 

That is to say, Joseph is having fun on the page, and her cleverness and wit abound. Most of the poetry books I've read and loved and kept on my nightstand have beaten me up, beat me down, and punched me in the gut with the severity of the topics they cover. There's a place for that––and there's a place for volumes that exude joy, even with poems detailing sexism and racism, as Lexicon does.

She's a poet who's comfortable enough in her craft that every poem is accessible, written without extraneous flourish. This is especially true in humor poems like the satirical "Fashion and Beauty Forecast;" the ode to the awkward phase, "Glasses and Braces;" the imaginary world of comic strip women in "Women's Encounter Group: Sunday Funnies;" and "Ms. Jackson Replies," where you can't help picturing André 3000 getting a good telling off from Erykah Badu's mom. 

"Fashion and Beauty Forecast" begins as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the unreasonable standards of the beauty industry:

Electric hair girdles.

Simulated pregnancy scars.

Creosote bleaching creams,

glass sliver nail polish.

Gasoline douches.

But by the poem's end, one realizes the critique is of vital importance; a commentary on the ways women are asked to change their bodies and how their bodies might be changed for them, without consent:

Calf removal surgery. Hymen

patch kit, needle included.

In "Ms. Jackson Replies," the concerned mother who's the subject of OutKast's song "Ms. Jackson," at long last gets her say:

You never meant to make my daughter cry,

but you did. … 

Now if my girl's baby was by Wynton Marsalis,

I wouldn't have a problem—such a fine young

man from a good family with a good education,

so smart they had him on public television

all month. But you, you get on TV and embarrass

me with your so-called apology, saying you're sorry

a trillion times. You don't even know

how to count, much less how much

a trillion is. You say you're for real,

but all I see is a phony who raps about hoes

The humor continues in self-aware and self-deprecating poems like "Mea Culpa" and "What They're Thinking While You're Reading Your Poems." These poems are among the most playful––Joseph is a pro doing what she loves, even when that means being resigned to the indignities of the literary life, even when that means being able to tell when an audience's attention is waning at your poetry reading and choosing to laugh anyway. The brutal honesty born of self-awareness is a gift to the reader. 

These are not the only ars poeticas peppered throughout Lexicon, which is just one of the many ways Joseph enlivens traditional poetic forms and principles to make them fresh. She's not afraid of intentional repetition or blatant rhyming patterns because she knows it's in the way she bends the rules in other ways that make the poems feel crisp and bold. She takes what some might say is old and tired and gives it a poetic upcycle. 

The self-awareness in "Mea Culpa" feels like an inside joke to the other poets who may be reading the collection:

Before this poem even begins, let me

apologize—I was drunk or high or

lovesick when I wrote it, and I knew

right away it wasn't going to work.

I'm already at line five, and I haven't

even used a single poetic device—

"What They're Thinking While You're Reading Your Poems," too, will be appreciated by those who have donned a stage with their own sheaf of poems in hand.

You're standing there, in your neat suit or scruffy jeans,

sheaf of new poems in your trembling hands, voice

barely audible so that the woman in the floral hat yells

louder!, and you twist the cranky microphone closer

to your mouth, yell better, is that better?, hope no one

will notice the shudder your voice acquires the longer

you read.

Sometimes the rhyming is meant to be evident to the reader, while other times, such as in "Laureate," it's blended in so well you hardly notice at a first read. The words roll through your ear, pleasant, like a beloved song. There's free verse, sestina, and villanelle, among others. Throughout the volume, Joseph shows the reader she can do it all––she's a multifaceted poet, and no word is careless, and no line is extraneous. Every single part of the poem is the result of an intentional artistic decision. 

Notice how slant rhyme flows to mimic natural speech in "Laureate":

He might say something wise enough to print.

She might make poetry more popular

than shin splints or those globs of pocket lint

inside your washed-out jeans. He might just bore

assemblies of the first- or seventh-grades;

she might disrobe and leave us all in shock.

He might not want to be here, but you paid

for all his expertise, his wit, his stock

responses to the questions asked each time:

Why write? Why poetry, why not real books?

Can what you've read be poetry, sans rhyme?

She might be thinking of her faded looks—

her sad visage poetic, but not for words.

He might be drunk right now, all vision blurred.

And yet, if I had to describe Joseph's style in Lexicon in a single word, it'd be wordplay. Both in its literal meaning because there are endless plays on words and in its more abstract meaning––Joseph is playing with words. Lexicon is Joseph's love letter to language. 

For example, in "Rules for Writing," Joseph breaks all the rules she sets forth in the poem:

Never mention any bodily functions,

especially any function that produces

stains of any kind. Never make

anyone cry, or laugh, or touch them

or arouse them, eyes on your own

paper, fingers where we

can see them. Never dance, never

curse, never sing, don't rhyme—

or rather, do rhyme, but only where

and when we tell you.

A poem that tells us not to mention bodily functions by mentioning bodily functions in the poem is a delightful tautology encapsulated in Joseph's playful style.

Though Lexicon is a love letter to language, as she illustrates in her poems, as a Black woman, it doesn't always love her back. 

While she may work some humor into poems like "Token Black" and "World's Worst White Supremacist," it doesn't mean that the way Joseph confronts racism in these poems is not to be taken earnestly. It's a laugh followed by a knowing sigh. The poems are so effective precisely because they reveal such painful truths. 

"Token Black" is particularly insightful about racism in the ivory tower of academia and replete with sarcasm:

Somehow you thought enough of me

to let me in this classroom, as long

as I sit quietly, not uttering a word.

Somehow you thought that I could be

brought up to speed, made to obey,

made to read history the way

you want me to

… 

For who can doubt your graciousness?

You've let me in, offered me a chair

"The World's Worst White Supremacist" is a poetic clapback at the patheticness of white supremacy and the people––often men––who perpetuate it:

He's got acne, needs a personal trainer,

has mousy brown hair with unruly waves.

He stutters, and it's embarrassing to stutter

when he has to say "white power" over

and over—all those w's. Spindly, sunken-

chested, sharp-nosed and sweaty

Several poems open and close with the same line, though often with entirely different meanings, which quite literally brings the poems full circle. 

For example, "Dead Mothers" opens with Joseph reminiscing about her deceased mother by considering what she might say and imagining her reactions if she were still alive. At first, feeling as though she's unable to escape from her mother's ghost unsettles Joseph:

They don't let go of us because they're dead;

nor can we let them go. All they have

is us—our hazy minds, our memories

revising how they spoke and walked,

what they wore, who they'd nag, ignore.

The poem ends with Joseph being at peace with her deceased mother's ghost lingering at the edges of her mind:

and why, where they breathed their last—

hospital or desk or twisted car.

Nor can we let them go—all they have

and were remains in us, transformed or not.

They don't let go of us because they're dead.

Though the poems that take on this structure vary greatly in subject, each one undergoes a transition in the middle paragraphs that take the reader on an emotional transition, so the beginning and end are both satisfying and well-earned.

On a larger narrative scale, Lexicon itself does the same thing––Joseph opens with poems grieving her mother's loss and ends with poems reminiscing about her mother. The poems honoring Joseph's mother follow the stages of grief, from "Grief: A Complaint" (denial/anger) to "Grief: A Petition" (bargaining) to "Dead Mothers" (depression) in the first half of the volume to "My Posthumous Mother" (acceptance) and "Domestic Humiliation" (acceptance) in the latter half of the book. In this way, too, Lexicon is a fitting title for the collection, giving readers language to talk about the harrowing loss of a parent. 

Throughout the collection, Joseph explores tensions between elegy and humor, profound and entertaining, the everyday and the life-changing, structured poetry and free verse, form and content, lyric and dialect, women and sexism, Black bodies and the ivory tower of academia, poetry for the people and poetry for "publish or perish." Joseph code switches so quickly throughout Lexicon and, in doing so, sheds light on the myriad of unreasonable demands placed upon Black women. 

I return to "Token Black" for a prime example:

I've been given to learn about this

great nation from texts that don't mention

anything black that isn't followed

by the words "poverty" or "underclass."

You've no idea what's happening in the hollows

of my body: my stomach, my fists;

no idea of the taste of bile behind

my lips, back of my throat. You see a smile,

a laugh you cannot hear the mockery in.

Likewise, "Looking Is For Poets" discusses the expectations placed on poets and the pressure to conform one's writing to what others will find palatable:

At first, you thought poets entertaining—

their rhythms and postures, eagerness

to please with rhyme and color. But then

they started to get beneath your skin,

provoking questions about your childhood,

your sleepwalking, your glass of wine

at bedtime, your fistful of pills come morn.

All these poets—the dead and the live ones,

the black and brown and white ones,

the male and female ones—you fear

they'll make you as neurotic as they are,

haunted by double meanings, phrases,

intimations of mortality.

In exploring all these tensions––racism and sexism, grief and meditations on longing, love and loss––and bringing them to the forefront in her poems, Joseph proves that in her capable poet's hands, there is no one or the other. To live is often to embody a state of "both/and." In the most expansive sense, Joseph shows readers what poetry can do and what she can do with it. 

Lexicon by Allison Joseph (104 pages, $16.95 USD) can be purchased from Red Hen Press: https://redhenpress.org/products/lexicon-by-allison-joseph