By Mary Ann Zehr, contributor
A monthly column in 2025 by a local teacher and reader about connecting with books and taking in Harrisonburg’s literary scene.
~ Faison, Latorial. Nursery Rhymes in Black. University of Alaska Press. An Imprint of University Press of Colorado, 2025 ~
The national Poetry Out Loud program has a mission to “lift poetry off the page, creating community and connection.” When I was a high school teacher first in the District of Columbia and then in Harrisonburg, my students and I did just that as we memorized “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. We spoke Hughes’ metaphors for a “dream deferred” to each other–sometimes in twos or threes in a reader’s theater and other times in unison.
Poetry Out Loud dispatched Regie Cabico, an energetic Filipino American poet and spoken word artist, to my classroom to lead us in movement exercises and help us overcome any fears of being loud. One of my students–Michelle Reyes–went on from our schoolwide poetry recitation contest to participate in the 2018 Poetry Out Loud competition for all D.C. public high schools. Reyes recited “Auto-Lullaby,” by Franz Wright, and when she spoke the line, “Think of a bird / that stands in your palm,” she fluttered her arms. Cabico and I attended the performance, which was also televised. We were so proud of her.
I believe the same about poems as I do about the plays of William Shakespeare: people can more readily experience how the words in them are lovely when they are spoken out loud.
Readings by Virginia Poets
In the first week of November, Virginia poets will be reading their work at Parentheses Books, Harrisonburg’s independent bookstore, offering opportunities for listeners to experience just how lovely words can be.
A headliner poet, Virginia native Latorial Faison, will read on Nov. 6 from her latest collection, Nursery Rhymes in Black. The collection was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, which will be announced in May. Faison is assistant professor of English and department chair in the Department of Languages and Literature at Virginia State University. She has received a fellowship from the Furious Flower Poetry Center.
Even when the words in Nursery Rhymes in Black remain on the page and I read them silently, they are something to be reckoned with. Many of Faison’s poems honor her grandmother, “Mama,” who raised Faison and is a mighty fortress. In one poem, Mama is a Black church. In another, she is “a Negro Spiritual.” Faison writes of Mama, “She laughed louder / than Jim Crow’s law & cried softer than God’s peace.”
Mama cleans hard, loves the people in her household and the church hard (by cooking cobblers, dumplings, banana puddings, and collard greens, among other dishes), sings in the style of Mahalia Jackson, and does everything for the glory of God.
In “Girl, 1983,” which Faison wrote in the style and form of a 1978 poem, “Girl,” by Jamaica Kincaid, Mama preaches a long string of advice to a girl, presumably the poet. Mama instructs the young person to be careful how she speaks to white people because they can make life difficult, but the girl should also not play down her intelligence around them. When Mama gets to the part in her outpouring that one should “Stay with God. He will not lead you / wrong,” I am quite convinced because I know Mama is a sensible woman and because she is so earnest (and loving) in her instructions–that I, too, will try to stick with God.
I anticipate that it is going to be something when Faison lifts off the page her poems about Mama. I expect that the words will burst out of any metaphorical parentheses at Parentheses Books.
A Gathering of Seven Poets
Several days before Faison’s reading, on Nov. 1, seven other Virginia poets will read their work at Parentheses Books. Their bios illustrate the variety of their experiences and works:
- Linda Ankrah-Dove, a British-American national and a social scientist, started writing poetry in 2006. Her work is often questioning, whimsical, or downright finger-pointing, especially on heartbreaking issues like global warming, social justice, and the mysteries of mind and matter.
- David Brennan lives in Harrisonburg and teaches writing and literature at James Madison University. He writes poems about machines and animals.
- Indigo Eriksen is originally from Colorado, most recently from Front Royal. She has taught writing to community college students in Northern Virginia for over a decade. Her poetry is meant to be read aloud.
- Lyman Grant began writing poems at the age of 15. He retired to Harrisonburg after 45 years of teaching in Texas. He writes primarily about the anxieties and absurdities of daily life.
- Martha Merz was born and raised in Harrisonburg. She began writing poetry at the age of nine and never stopped. She has worked as an editor/writer for the federal government and taught literature at George Mason University and Chesapeake College. Themes in her poetry are the beauty of the natural world, tragedy, existential loneliness, and a sense that Nature is the ur-mother.
- Tom Russell, a native of Washington, D.C., is a retired administrative librarian and now lives in Harrisonburg. He studied at the University of Michigan with John Ciardi and other eminent poets. He is a former officer of the Poetry Society of Virginia and has given readings of his work in as many as seven states.
- Kevin Seidel is professor of English at Eastern Mennonite University and lives in Harrisonburg. His first published poem is about baseball.
A line that stands out to me in these bios that organizers provided is that Indigo Eriksen’s poetry “is meant to be read aloud.” Indeed!
Parentheses Books extends an invitation to anyone who attends the reading with the seven Virginia poets to bring a poem that they’ve written themselves and lift it off the page at the end of the event.
Seven Virginia poets will gather to read their work at 4 pm on Nov. 1 at Parentheses Books, 76 W. Gay Street, in Harrisonburg. Latorial Faison will give a reading at the bookstore starting at 5:30 pm on Nov. 6.
Thanks for reading The Citizen, which won the Virginia Press Association’s 2022 News Sweepstakes award as the top online news site in Virginia. We’re independent. We’re local. We pay our contributors, and the money you give goes directly to the reporting. No overhead. No printing costs. Just facts, stories and context. We value your support.
