Johannesburg & Other Poems

Plumpp ( Blues, The Story Always Untold ) is that rarity: a poet who looks with his ears. This beautifully orchestrated volume begins with poems that explore the slave and plantation ancestry of African Americans. Borrowing the rhythms and repetitive devices of blues singers, he opens the form to include contemporary images: Calvin Klein clothing and unemployment lines. But where bluesmen sing of personal hardships, these poems reach out to encompass the suffering of all within earshot. Plumpp's identification with others is so credible that one of his finest poems is written in the voice of an elderly woman reflecting on her life. By the time readers are taken along on the poet's first journey to South Africa, the aural links have been formed: ``I have been here. / In easy rhythms of / black women, some / thing balanced / on their heads.'' Plumpp forges powerful connections between the struggles of blacks in present-day South African townships and in the American South of both the 1860s and the 1960s. Yet he does so with grace; humor serves instead of anger, rhythm replaces an orator's call to arms. This isn't posturing, it's perfect pitch. (Sept.)