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A review by sloatsj
White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino
5.0
I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from this collection, though I knew it dealt with ancestry and the American South. The epigraph sets it up well, three lines from a Lucille Clifton poem:
pay attention to
what sits inside yourself
and watches you
I was gladly surprised by how much I liked the poems and Petrosino's approach(es). The subject matter is heavy but the poems are inspired, they breathe. The first section of the book consists of just one poem, which begins:
You're on a train & your ancestors are in the Quiet Car.
Petrosino uses both formal poetry like sonnets and villanelles as well as free verse. One approach that worked really well here was erasure, which she applies to the results of a DNA ancestry test, which shows a mixed heritage from Western Africa, North and East Africa and Northwestern Europe. Some of those poems were published here (note: I found them easier to read on paper than online): https://bit.ly/3y5BwKa
pay attention to
what sits inside yourself
and watches you
I was gladly surprised by how much I liked the poems and Petrosino's approach(es). The subject matter is heavy but the poems are inspired, they breathe. The first section of the book consists of just one poem, which begins:
You're on a train & your ancestors are in the Quiet Car.
Petrosino uses both formal poetry like sonnets and villanelles as well as free verse. One approach that worked really well here was erasure, which she applies to the results of a DNA ancestry test, which shows a mixed heritage from Western Africa, North and East Africa and Northwestern Europe. Some of those poems were published here (note: I found them easier to read on paper than online): https://bit.ly/3y5BwKa