 |
pull away from shore, my home
didn't know I would want to say
good-bye to the shoreline."
Not even fifteen years old, young Marie's burgeoning success in the laundry services abruptly comes to a screeching halt when her mother passes away. In Rodley's narrative-based poetry, characters wear their emotions on their sleeves, and Marie's disgust at her father's new lady love, Glenda, is palpable. Far from a maternal figure, Glenda strives to create constraints around Marie while brainwashing Marie's father with her sensuality. The result is a father determined to marry his daughter off as a consequence of her perceived belligerence. This decision becomes the inciting incident to a riveting plot delivered through captivating lyrical poetry.
From the onset, the namesake poem, "Counter Point," sets the tone of love on the rough seas, with the mouth being compared to a compass. There is no getting lost here. The grace with which love is romanticized in this poem epitomizes the unfolding storyline, where Marie, clever and determined, leaves everything behind to embark on a new life on the pirate ship, the Whydah. Posing as a man, she ponders the natural beauty of the ocean, but the calm of the sea is interrupted not long after her arrival by bullets and cannon blasts.
As has been a tendency for Marie, from chaos, calm emerges, and this is no ordinary calm. Samuel has discovered her secret, and in "Conch," the yearning of young love is directly juxtaposed with poems like "Eventide," which foreshadow the tenuous decisions to come. Above all else, Rodley's work is a masterful fusion of story and poetry that accompanies Marie's various phases of coming of age. Nevertheless, each phase is centered around love: a mother's love (and its loss), a man's love, and maternal love. Unquestionably, the imagery and the seamless storytelling bring alive not just Marie's character but the journey on the Whydah itself.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review