THE VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS AND OTHER POEMS - ROBIN COSTE LEWIS

Got this one from a friend of mine as part of a book trade when I asked him for some poetry. I didn’t know it at the time but apparently this book is quite famous by modern poetry standards and Lewis is a bit of a celebrity in the poetry world. I’m glad it was suggested to me, I’m not sure I would have found it otherwise, given how little poetry I tend to read (something I feel bad about and would like to change). But let’s get into the book itself. The book is 19 shorter, more “standard” poems wrapped around a large, 70+ page central epic, “The Voyage of the Sable Venus” which is the main course, so to speak, of this book. TVotSV is conceptually pretty brilliant, Lewis spent years going to art museums and looking at catalogs online to find any art that featured Black women, in any capacity. She then took the titles and descriptions of these pieces and rearranged them into the poem. The effect is mesmerizing and slowly builds tension. It takes the airless and aloof tone of this sort of writing and asks us to pay close attention to what it’s actually saying, allowing the horror, the monstrousness, or Dracularity (to steal from Pynchon), that lies at the heart of “Western Civilization.” Typically, this sort of writing is only encountered when the work of art it’s describing is nearby, it’s supplementary by it’s very nature. Lewis is making it the main event, we have to imagine the art being described (tho, I suppose one could look up each piece, she does include a long list of what works’ descriptions she drew from), which is unsettling and foregrounds exactly the sort of lacuna she’s exploring w/r/t Black female representation. I found it pretty powerful. That being said, I actually think I enjoyed the other sections of the book, the more “conventional” poems more. There’s a beautiful poem towards the beginning about being stuck in a car in India while a herd of cows blocks her way, that is both transportive and sad. There is a poem towards the end about child abuse that is likewise effecting and lingered with me. Lewis is a great poet. She’s conceptually interesting and has the confidence and skill to pull off a something as formally complicated as the main poem here and she’s also got the skills to break your heart with a standard poem. I’m looking forward to more work by her.