#Poetry S. McCrae Finalist 2017 National Book
- Author: Shane McCrae
- Title: In the Language of My Captor
- Published: 2017
- Genre: poems
- Trivia: 2011 Shane McCrae received the Whiting Award.
- Trivia: The Animal Too Big to Kill won the 2014 Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award.
- Trivia: In the Language of My Captor was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award and a
- Trivia: winner of the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.
Introduction:
- McCrae speaks through the voices of
- black man in a hman zoo (inspiration: Ota Benga)
- black American actor (inspiration: Stepin Fetchit)
- black ward of Jefferson Davis Jim Limber
- ….and some autobiographical prose poems
- giving a fleeting glance into the poet’s childhood.
- I found the poems of Jim Limber were so touching
- giving me a look at the other side of Jefferson Davis
- President of the Confederacy
- …as Daddy Jeff.
Epiphany:
- I listened to a podcast
- ….an interview with Shane McCrae.
- Suddenly a light went on in my head.
- The poems in the voice of Jim Limber should be
- held against the backdrop of the poet’s own life!
- Jim Limber was the black ward of Jefferson Davis,
- President of the Confederate States of America.
- Shane McCrae was raised by his white grandparents.
- Both Jim and Shane were living with a white supremacist.
- Just keep that thought in mind as you read the Jim Limber poems.
Structure:
- When is a sonnet a sonnet?
- If you look at the Jim Limber poems…
- you would not recognize them as sonnets
- …but they are.
- They are not in the standard form
- ..but there are
- Spencerian, Italian and Shakespearean sonnets.
- I’m still trying to figure out the meter and rhyme!
- The poem in which Jefferson Davis speaks is a dream.
- McCrae did not want Davis in the present
- …only in emotions passing through his mind.
Conclusion:
- The deepest feelings are the hardest to define.
- McCrea uses the voices of others:
- Jim Limber (black boy ward of Jefferson Davis)
- Ota Benga (Congo pygmy) featured in an anthropology exhibit
- Stepin Fetchit (America’s first black movie star)
- to expose racism.
- In several poems there is an
- …exactness that is palpable.
- Here are a few lines about:
White folks:
- …’cause how they own you is they own your options
- …I waste my mind trying to read white folks’ minds
- …they name you for a thing your hunger made you do (Hambone Jones)
- …I (Jim) look at Joe (step brother)
- …he got daddy Jeff’s face, My daddy’s white
- so I don’t get his face.
Last thoughts:
- Here is a podcast so you can
- meet this young American poet
- …and listen to a very good discussion
- …about McCrae’s life and his work.
- McCrae is bi-racial (white mother and black father)
- He was raised by his white supremacist grandparents.
- He dropped out of high school but earned a GED certificate.
- (General Educational Development)
- He attended Linfield College in Oregon and went on to
- earn a law degree at Harvard.
- This poet has a lot to tells us….have a listen.