Poetic “Justice”
by Denise Duhamel
I am honored and humbled to introduce the following poems written in response to my poem “I’ve Been Known.” First published almost twenty years ago in a wonderful (but now defunct) magazine called Margie, my poem was picked up by Billy Collins for his project Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools, which is still available online. The poem, for me, is a slang-filled “confession.” The tender and boisterous emulations from the poets of the Community Justice Center have each made the sentiments in my poem all their own. The following poems display risk and heart as well as a stunning attention to craft.
Allison’s “I Have Been Known” boldly uses the same end rhyme throughout the poem, like an insistent sonnet, as the speaker matures from a child’s sensibility to a more realistic, self-love as she lives her “masterpiece.” Hannah’s “I’ve Been Known” takes the reader on a free verse journey from trying to “numb” herself to embracing sobriety and “one day at a time.” Anonymous deftly uses the repeating of whole lines as though the speaker is trying to convince the reader of a certain reality which twists and complicates with the poem’s rhyming couplet at the end. Marcus uses a staccato two-word line throughout his poem with reoccurring pronouncements of a speaker who’s been known to “steal,” “lie,” “cheat,” introducing the pattern of a difficult cycle. Nigel’s speaker wants to keep a lid on his emotions and introduces the reader to his various strategies, including being a “smartass,” but then ends with the word “explode,” harkening back to Langston Hughes’ “Harlem.” Patrick’s poem may very well be a companion poem to Nigel’s. In Patrick’s prose poem we see a speaker who ignores his own desires and needs as he gives away too much of himself, the way he knows “to love.” S.’s poem is also fierce in its portrayal of love, as the speaker asserts she is “more than just a number” and affirms her role as wife and mother. And finally, Edgar uses a then and now grammatical strategy that beautifully paints a picture of a speaker who was once known as a “piece of shit” who would “sell you shit” to a man who switches from “dope” to an “ice cold Coke.”
The journeys and “confessions” made by these poets all tell a unique narrative, an all-too-human narrative as each poet finds their own voice.
DENISE DUHAMEL’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). She and Julie Marie Wade co-authored TheUnrhymables: Collaborations in Prose (Noctuary Press, 2019). She is a Distinguished University Professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.