BOOK REVIEW
Offers A Compelling
Tribute to Reshape Our
Musical Narratives
By Shani Jamila
“Jangle up its teeth until it can tell
our story the way you would tell
your own”
Tyehimba Jess is known for giving flesh to stories
“straight from America’s barbwired heart” that have been
marginalized over the course of history. His trademark
virtuosity and genius are on full display in his recently
released second collection of poetry, Olio.
On a recent train ride into Manhattan, I ran into a
colleague who remarked on his well- worn book that sat
dog-eared in my lap. I held it up so that she could take
a picture of the cover as I enthusiastically explained
the mastery of form that Jess demonstrates in this latest
publication. It’s been more than ten years since his
National Poetry Series winning debut collection Leadbelly
was published, but as viewers of his 2011 TED talk know,
Jess has been working in that interim period on further
cultivating his already notable poetic aesthetic.
His signature syncopated sonnets have numerous
possibilities for interpretation—they can be read column
by column, crosswise, backwards or as a whole. As
he describes in the appendix, they are simultaneously
“interstitial, anti-gravitational and diagonal.” And that
is one of the most remarkable features of this book —not
only is it over 200 pages long, an exceptionally thick
volume for a poet, but many pieces contain multitudes.
24
african Voices
Indeed, some pages are designed to be torn out and
reshaped into rolls, banners and folds to create something
newer still. The end result is a deeply layered manuscript
that one can get lost in, inspired by, and stand in awe of.
Olio, which Jess dedicates to our community’s long
trajectory of musicians who’ve devoted their whole selves
to their art form but never had their work recorded, takes
its name from the variety of performances that comprised
the second half of a minstrel show. It is a meticulously
researched book that gives voice to a cast of fourteen
characters, including figures such as the conjoined twins
Millie and Christine McKoy, Henry “Box” Brown who
made history with his daring escape from enslavement,