While many don’t adhere closely enough to traditional blank verse rules to be considered sonnets in my mind, they undoubtedly benefit from the author’s chosen constraints.ĭickson Blackburn is a visual artist with an MFA in studio art.
In “Lub-Dup,” one of my favorites – “This is the sound of the heart, over half/is the sound of turning away.” In a short space, Dickson Blackburn takes us from the heart’s chamber to the invention of the stethoscope, to the present day scope her son holds against her own chest, to a poignant ending I won’t give away here.įor fellow poets, it’s notable that many of the poems are 14-line, counted syllable creations which may be considered contemporary sonnets in some schools of thought. In “America,” a young slave woman, Julia Frances Lewis – “my song/fell to the rhythm of his coming/hoof beats and he swung me to his mare/in one course pull” In “George Manoa Hall,” an imprisoned Confederate soldier – “I wear/the wind through August thunder, ride/my quiet song of delirium, and bathe/in each day’s hundred deaths.” The first poem, “First Edition, 1924,” establishes a theme for the collection in its lines exploring “what we/own, what we know, and how long/we hold the things we receive.” From there Dickson Blackburn looks the past square in the eye, alternately taking on voices from history and exploring her own life: The poems in CAMEO weave the complexities of family, Southern, American, and even world history in a striking, personal way. Cameo by Melissa Dickson Blackburn, from New Plains Press
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