Rhapsody for Lessons Learned or Remembered

Georgia Banks-Martin walks us through an art gallery. We view art which she has processed and questioned through her lens: Lawrence Monet Van Gogh Beardon Sargent Degas to name a few of the artists. She challenges the reader to face slavery grief and joy to feel the weight the South bears to examine art across centuries for lessons. These poems revive what has been omitted in our history books-individual life stories. She uses sound music and voice to make imagery pulse in these ekphrastic poems. In her poem Railroad Station after a Jacob Lawrence: Those leaving the towns where father and mother/labored in fields without being offered a yard of thread spun/from the cotton they pulled have assembled./Packed: Hopes of work three bedroom homes/water heated in water tanks classrooms. As memories populate her poems so does the theme of hope permeate her book; in Death Dancing after a Max Slevogt: I wish memories could be buried as easily as bodies. . . . a book to remember as you stand face to face with art. Julene Tripp Weaver author of No Father Can Save Her