“The Revolution and Abundance” —
A Review of Angelique Zobitz’s Love Letters to The Revolution
Angelique Zobitz’s first book Love Letters to The Revolution was released this past November (2020) through the American Poetry Journal. Zobitz begins and ends this book with love in one hand and revolution in the other. It is a book of ferocity, tenderness, and profound talent.
The book’s first step toward readers is in the form of a love letter, “Love Letter to The Revolution, №1.” “Little Sister,” the poem begins. With these two opening words, Zobitz ushers in the voices of Black womxn and Black communities. This opening line is simultaneously intimate and personal while also being wide-ranging and political.
The poem itself is a cento, braiding the voices of nine Black womxn authors together, and that first line is from bell hooks, Appalachian Elegy, in which hooks states “listen little sister.” Zobitz’s second line, “Nobody spoke to me,” is from Ntozake Shange, senses of heritage. In these initial choices, Zobitz introduces the topics of speech and voicelessness to readers. The speaker of this poem was not spoken to, but now she herself is pulled to speak, compelled to bring forth her voice and use her voice to speak to and encourage the “little sister.”
Using many voices to direct verse in the form of an address to another voice/another person outside the poem results in a gathering of past, present, and future voices together. It is a moving example of collecting, collaborating, and amplifying Black womxn’s words. In this regard, I would say that the form of the cento is emotionally, ethically, and ideologically connected to the meaning of the poem; Zobitz uses the form to bring together verses from Black womxn and weaves them to express a message that is, in itself, about celebrating voice.
I would also argue that combining the cento form with the epistle form is a stroke of genius. (What should this be called? Should this be called a “Dear Sister Cento” in future craft and workshop classes when students try to emulate the form?)
The book’s second poem, “Full Throated,” begins with a reference toward the “grandma’s people.” Whereas the speaker in the first poem addresses a “you” (“little sister”) and encourages the you to act (“Be who you are”), to speak (be a “boisterous Black Angel”), and to bring loudness and strength to the world (“I will give you thunder”), the second poem is a dramatic, well-crafted shift. Here, in the second poem, the speaker addresses a “you,” who is the white oppressor (“Bitch, / please.”). Here, the speaker defines and delineates exactly what she will fight for (“won’t be / compelled to cradle / every word on my tongue”), the oppression she will not accept (“Bite my tongue? / I’ve heard … requests that I stay calm”), and the ways she won’t give in (“To fix my lips for long, / never”). The speaker closes with the declaration: “I let sing, / every word.”
It’s a great movement, the first poem to the second poem, the shift from voices to voice. The second poem itself is about the rebellious act of being full-throated; it’s about the institutionalized suppression/oppression of Black womxn’s voices and the revolutionary act of speaking fully. “The fumes of their words,” the narrator in this second poem says, regarding the voicelessness and enforced quiet of her ancestors, “are why / my throat is dry from how often / I refuse to choke.” Yes.
As the book progresses, readers are brought from modern Black womxn poets and writers, to the personal ancestry of the grandmother’s generation, and then in the third poem to Mame Coumba Bang, Senegalese river goddess, the voice of myth and legend.
In Zobitz’s poetry — and in the world — language, speaking, voice, and being heard are key. Part of the craft Zobitz employs to further this message is a wide, expansive variety of language. She uses scientific language (“metamorphosis”), pop culture references (“Wendy Williams”), educated erudite references (“répétiteur”), BDSM references (“over the spanking bench and with the strategic application of medical grade lubricant”), religious imagery (“message in tongues’), and more. Zobitz’s poetry pays tribute to a choir of Black poets, such as bell hooks, Patricia Smith, and Lucille Clifton. Her poetry commemorates and creates an artistic memorial for so many Black womxn who have been lost through state-sanctioned murder: Breonna Taylor, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and others.
To say her name, we need speech, we need voices, and to have speech and voices, we need revolution — which is what Zobitz crafts through her poetry.
As the book continues, Zobitz’s poems move into the intimate and vulnerable world of motherhood and raising a child of color in the United States. In “The World Is A Jaguar With Sharp Teeth Crouched Outside Our Door,” the speaker describes how she taught her daughter “no means no” and “yes baby girl hell yes autonomy.” The poem is a single sentence prose poem, the energy unbroken by line breaks or end punctuation. The reader feels the encompassing intensity of motherhood — as the poem depicts the parent helping the daughter with “tooth brushing putting on her shoes car rides to school” alongside the terrifying reality of raising a child of color in a society entrenched with white supremacy and brutality, a society in which “little boys are taught persistence leading to yes is correct.”
Here, too, the topic of voice is palpable as the reader hears the daughter’s voice herself: “just yesterday she said and I quote didn’t I tell you no don’t ask me again end quote.”
In these poems about mothering, the reader learns that “The Revolution” is, in fact, a nickname or referent used for the speaker’s daughter. I found this book to be a poetry of deep love, sustaining love in the face of daily horrors. It is also a poetry of feet-on-the-ground actions and change. In this book, Zobitz presents a speaker capable of creating freedoms with her words. The freedom of imagination, followed by the freedom of word. Which gifts readers the freedom of emotion.
As I read Zobitz’s poems, I felt an expansion of my own notion of the concept and meaning of “revolution.” I felt that “The Revolution” could be considered the act of giving life and fostering life and supporting that life, the Revolution could be considered an extension of the self that moves toward its own independent identity. By the end of Zobitz’s book, I held a new sense of the word “revolution.” Revolution as a life-building effort. Revolution as an abundance of Black womxn’s voices. I love these ideas. I’m listening and I think other readers will be eager to as well.
Sherine Gilmour graduated with an M.F.A. in Poetry from New York University. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming from Entropy, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Indianapolis Review, Mom Egg Review, Salamander, Third Coast, and other publications.
