The Possibility of Poetry Revealed in Evie Shockley’s a half-red sea
By: Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA


arriving, you staggered, no, tightroped
your way to the mic. your hollow apology
rang with the purity of a spoon tapped
against plastic. reading, your words poured
like oatmeal, clumped and milky, over your
red lips. what could (be) wrong (with) you?

why you wanna treat me so bad

from double bop for ntozake shange
-Evie Shockley

In a half-red sea, Cave Canem graduate and Rutgers University Professor Evie Shockley quilts a brave and unapologetic tapestry of poems that summon fortitude, light, and the resilience of human spirit. Shockley’s second collection, published by Carolina Wrenn Press, mirrors Haryette Mullen’s complexity, Nikki Giovanni’s wit and sarcasm, and the elegant attention to detail unearthed in Marilyn Nelson’s formalist compositions. Shockley’s collection gifts such gems as protect yourself, the last temptation: a 21st-century bop odyssey, and, you remind me that undoubtedly situate her within a dynamic and diverse sisterhood of Africana women poets who insistently redefine and erase the stoic boundaries of Euro-centered canonical tradition.
Readers enter a half-red sea with the gracefully crafted possibilities of poetry, upon her death for literary trailblazer and revolutionary sonneteer Gwendolyn Brooks. Shockley offers,

“i will brook no evil, for
thou art not gone, gwen,
and poems made of tears
evaporate. when the drops
dry, scrape gray lines of salt
and dreams from brown faces.”

This poem exhibits Shockley’s keen usage of enjambment, subtle manipulation of internal rhyme and music which leaps from each line like breath between lovers.

a half-red sea sends readers on a journey that spans three thematically-balanced sections titled passage, rafts, and pull. Together, these sections travel historical, musical, and mythological landscapes that nudge, urge and demand the readers’ to be enlivened by ethereal figures as Billie Holiday, Phillis Wheately, and Frederick Douglass. In you can say that again, billie Shockley writes,

“southern women serve strife keep lines of pride open
trees are not taller than these broad vessels femmes who
bear fully armored knights clinking from the womb but
a night in whining ardor means black woman compelled how
strange brown vassal on a bed of green needles ingests the
fruit of georgia let that gestate but be-gets no child of the south”

This excerpt best illustrates Shockley’s handling of punctuation(less) lines in the tradition of Lucille Clifton and Ntozake Shange, as well as others. This practice is quite daring because it often is accompanied by awkward line breaks, ineffective pauses, and unnatural stanzaic configurations. Shockley, however, handles this not-so-conventional convention with delicacy and poise.

While several poems in a half-red sea are a joy to read and re-read, the ballad of anita hill quickly surfaced as a daily mantra among poems located in the section titled rafts. Arranged in three sections, Shockley weaves a landscape where “winter fell/ heavy and wet, quiet out of season,”. Sections two and three of the ballad recall swooning images of sexual violence practiced on the bodies of Africana women. This poem serves as a call to action for women, regardless of ethnic and cultural heritage, to stand and fight sexual assault even when she may be accused of being a
“queen-bitch-jezebel-matriarch-whore,
destroyer of black manhood, and so much more.”

the ballad of anita hill features biting imagery, scathing critique minus the didactic lamentation, and an unobtrusive rhyme scheme that whispers the wisdom of Audre Lorde whose body of work reminds us that “our silence will not save us”.

Poems should have individual identities and poetry collections should function as living harmonious communities purposeful and intentioned. In a half-red sea Shockley conjures poems that perform these duties and so much more.

Author’s Biography

Ebony Noelle Golden, MFA, is a poet, performer, and educator currently teaching African American Literature, Composition and Creative Writing at North Carolina Central University and Louisburg College as a Visiting Instructor. She has self-published a chap book of poems titled the sweet smell of juju funk and is currently editing mama's hieroglyphics to be released next year. In the near future, Ebony plans to undergo doctoral studies in Performance and stage her multimedia choreopoem, What Aunt Sarah Says to Siffronia When Sweet Thing is Moon-Watching and Peaches is Dancing to the Wind. Ebony can be contacted via email at goldendharma@yahoo.com or www.goldendharma.blogspot.com.