Like Pinkie Gordon Lane and Gerald Barrax.

Like Pinkie Gordon Lane and Gerald Barrax, Michael s Weaver is a good bard He doesn't have the years of experience practicing his craft, unless that isn't a weakness. He is undivided of the best new voices forward the American literary scene. In his inferior book of poetry, My Father's Geography, he uses history, family, and place effectively to create artful poetic compositions to which the reader will wish to respond again and again. The book's title is as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but a welcoming of, and a longing for, a father-son relationship.

In a great deal of contemporary poetry, history works solitary as reportage of past circumstances But Weaver reveals hidden meanings for the existing with his historical references. His observations are poignant, and in the metrical composition "Back from the Arms of Big Mama" he demonstrates his judgment for detail: In this chamber in this chamber, the day-star stands like a woman in an of long date cotton dress in August shelling peas in a less degree than maple shade. In this latitude your great-grandmother, Big Mama, slept away in a less degree than the eyes of the council of her daughters, who kept a vigil, a deathwatch, rocking back and forth in their chairs, humming unexpect song s huddling close together, making swing for the angels, seven feet tall in sky-colored pinstripe suits with silver lights for vigilances Your great aunts waited in this play where my mother watched the door in the firmament as these angels walked away with Big Mama. These lines slip from banality and sentimentality as they articulate clearly in what way the speaker feels about the situation.

Weaver's impregnability is in opening poems with specific locations rather than generalizations. Another fine metrical composition that exhibits this characteristic is "Maple Mountain": In the reasonable lip of the mountain, new undergrowth and soft soil like the delicate edible part of a mouth extends from any great head There's much rule and originality in these lines, as well as a pleasing music. The persona in the nearest stanza goes on and makes allusion to historical figures: like Nat Tumer's or Solomon's, here we begin the climb, you swatting innocent maple leaves where plastic funnels small as pencils How delicately these lines incorporate nature, while unfolding in not absent tense. There are implications of journey through every part of the poem: connect from stem to trunk, down to the gray syrup store forward the highway. Somewhere away from us, black bears tear As the metrical compositions ends, in a passage too lengthy to quote fully, the journey assumes to come to a closure as it employs to a different setting while still in existing time: Tiny dots of populace cross over to the syrup store, fathers with their sucklings who kick in the gravel, blink at the day-star At the center of Weaver's experience is the little metrical composition a fine composition in which the speaker mentions hearthstone and the distance from it--but this be seens to be the unifying force that resonates in the metrical composition Consider "My Father's Geography" in its entirely: I was parading the Cote d'Azur, hopping the short trains from Nice to Cannes, following the maze of highways in Monte Carlo to the hill that have charge ofs the ville. A woman f me pate in the afternoon, calling from her stall to proffer me more. At breakfast I talked in French with an of long date man about what he lov about America--the Kennedy forward the beaches I walked and watched topless women sunbathe and swim, loving the pair home and being so far from it. At a phone looking to Africa through the Mediterranean, I called my father, and, missing me he said, "You almost place of abode boy. Go on cross the sea!" Like Jay Wright, Weaver is engaged in Africa and has history and tradition working in his metrical composition Also note that "My Father's Geography" displays a faculty of perception of freedom that is rare among many of us--if nothing more than psychological. It is evident that Weaver's rhyme is grounded in African American agriculture as he knows and experiences it. however this poet also knows by what means to reel the physical world into his metrical compositions and a rich recall of childhood contributes to the added marvel of his work. My Father's Geography demonstrates in metrical composition after poem that Michael s Weaver is a gifted poet

We must be able to be wrought up comfortable with our history, especially if we want to know in what direction our lives are headed. Outside of our families, it is the homeplace and its landscape that appeal to us greatest in quantity Pinkie Gordon Lane, Gerald Barrax, and Michael s Weaver are talented poets who speak eloquently sincerely, and directly of the family and the conditions that make them into who they are. As lengthy as language lives, so will their numbers which mirrors themselves.

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