No Horsing Around

Alice Walker's fourth book of poetry may surprise readers of The Color Purple, but it is hardly an anticlimactic follow-up to the Pulitzer Prizewinning novel. The collection of poem's begins with an almost apologetic quote from Lame Deer, a Sioux medicine man: "For bringing us the horse we could almost forgive you for bringing us whiskey. Horses make a landscape look more beautiful." The reader who expects poems about horses and flowers, however, will be disappointed. Walker's poems are sharp, often political criticisms aimed at contemporary society.

A veteran of the civil rights movement, Walker continues to create poems that combine artistic mastery with biting political statements. In "The Diamonds on Liz's Bosom," Walker uses satire to make us face the economic chain that ties the world to South Africa. "We Alone" is also about economic chains, but Walker attempts to offer a solution to the consumerism which plagues Western society:

We alone can devalue gold/ by not caring/ if it falls or rises/ in the marketplace./ Wherever there is gold/ there is a chain, you know.../ Feathers, shells / and sea-shaped stones/ are all as rare./ This could be our revolution:/ To love what is plentiful/ as much as/ what's scarce."

Walker not only attacks the United States' ties to South Africa but also criticizes the attitudes that have made "people of color" doubt their own value. "Without Commericals" is a taut poem that appeals directly to the reader. Like a revolutionary manifesto, it repeats its message, both exhorting and assuring in one phrase. But for Walker, the enemy is not The White Man: She is perceptive enough to identify cosmetic beauty as oppressive because of the impossible ideals we are told to reach for and admire. Physical beauty has become a commodity we can acquire but at the cost of our self-esteem:

"Listen, stop tanning yourself/ and talking about fishbelly white...Stop unfolding/ your eyes./ Your eyes are beautiful.../ Stop trimming your nose./ When you/ diminish/ your nose/ your songs/ become little/ tinny, muted/ and snub./ Stop bleaching/ your skin/ and talking/ about/ so much black/ is not beautiful..."

Again Walker offers a personal answer: the poet's vision of beauty. As a Black woman, she has learned "to worship/ the sun again./ To affirm the adventures/ of hair." As a poet and feminist, she affirms the value of the self without manufactured beauty: "For we are all/ splendid/ descendants/ of Wilderness,/ Eden:/ needing only/ to see/ each other/ without/ commercials/ to believe./ Copied skillfully/ as Adam./ Original/ as Eve." The last two lines punctuate Walker's message to women.

"Each One, Pull One", which is subtitled "Thinking of Lorraine Hansberry", is a poem of anger and anguish. At first, Walker seems to identify "them", the oppressors, very clearly: "We do not admire their president/ We know why the White House is white". But her message pulls in every artist whose voice has been silenced, ignored, or deliberately forgotten:

We must say it all, and as clearly as we can. For even before we are dead, they are busy trying to bury us.

Were we black? Were we women?

Were we gay?

Were we the wrong shade of black?

Were we yellow? Did we, God forbid, love the wrong person, country or politics...

But most of all, did we write exactly what we saw as clearly as we could?

Were we unsophisticated enough to cry and scream?

All of Walker's poems attempt to embrace an audience of women and men of all backgrounds. For Walker, being a Black woman writer is not an exclusionary title. She sees her position as broadened by each of the labels that identifies her; thus, every reader can find her poetry in mate.