A Poet Sings: Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split

Photo by Rachael Eliza Griffiths

My dear friend Nikky Finney's new book Head Off &Split will be released February 1. I've announced the arrival of friends' books here in the past but I am so very thrilled about this one. Anyone who knows Nikky knows she works hard, she thinks about the world hard. She holds the world up to our eyes and makes us see it for all its dirt and guts and beauty. Flinch if you want to but it's coming anyhow. If you've read her work, she's done it to you before in On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice and The World is Round. But this book, her fourth volume, takes the sacred personal, the regional and the universal to a new Finney level. Heart, gristle, blood, guts, bone. It's all there between these pages. Go see for your self and pre-order a copy.

I announced it in a previous blog but again : These are the best poems that Nikky has ever written. This is the best book that Nikky has ever written. All I can say is GET READY!

The poems in Nikky Finney's breathtaking new collection Head Off & Split sustain a sensitive and intense dialogue with emblematic figures and events in African American life: from civil rights matriarch Rosa Parks to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, from a brazen girl strung out on lightning to a terrified woman abandoned on a rooftop during Hurricane Katrina. Finney's poetic voice is defined by an intimacy that holds a soft yet exacting eye on the erotic, on uncanny political and family events, like her mother's wedding waltz with South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, and then again on the heartbreaking hilarity of an American president's final State of the Union address.

Artful and intense, Finney's poems ask us to be mindful of what we fraction, fragment, cut off, dice, dishonor, or throw away, powerfully evoking both the lawless and the sublime.

Those of you who will attend AWP will see her at "The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World" panel with Lauret Savoy, Elmaz Abinader, Faith Adiele, Fred Arroyo & Debra Kang Dean.

Each week (or so up until the Feb. 1 HO&S drop deadline) a new video will be released for our viewing pleasure where you will see several of the poems from the collection come alive. Watch for them on YOUTUBE or look for them here.

Her new website is also very beautiful check it out here.

 

Monday Motivation: Hong

It's the first week of the new year and already my Monday Motivation has been postponed until Tuesday. This morning writing was a fight. My mind was like a sieve of thoughts. Not thoughts about the next scene and how my protagonist would make her way through her current predicament but thoughts of the unpaid bills, the unanswered email, the todo list, the children, the grandchildren, the unborn grandchild, the dishes. I wanted to concentrate on the task at hand but I was incapable of it so I leaned into my wild mind and found myself settled on Hong.

So here is my freewrite about Hong:

Hong is from Cambodia.
Hong was responsible for my Christmas present to myself, a pedicure.
Hong has been in the United States for five years.
Hong is a Buddhist.
Hong's real name isn't Hong but that is the name he thought I could pronounce.

I think he was used to women plopping their feet into the spa bath and not speaking to him at all. So in the beginning in his broken English, he simply gave me directions, "Foot here, Foot down."

Being my grandmother's girl, I felt guilty for being waited on. I am the type of woman who will bus my own table in a restaurant if I don't control myself. Perhaps it is because my grandmother was a domestic worker that any form of subserviance makes me nervous.

I kept apologizing to Hong "I'm sorry my feet are like this." If I failed at understanding his directions, he would pat my foot like a puppy and say "No, up." Or "no, here." And I kept saying "I'm sorry."

He scraped away at my feet and rather than apologizing so much, I stopped saying anything for a few minutes before saying "What religion?' and nodding toward an altar in the corner filled with fruit and inscense.

"Buddhist."

"I have some friends. American Buddhist," I said. He looked back down at my feet. "I am not so sure they know what they are doing," I said and we both laughed. I'm not convinced he understood what I was saying.

I asked him where he was from.

"Cambodia. You know Cambodia?"

I nodded my head yes and said "But I've never been there."

He dipped my feet back into the whirlpool of blue salts. Nodded.

"Are you homesick?"

He looked puzzled.

"You miss home?"

"Sometimes. No money. Too expensive." He described for me the long plane ride from Los Angles to Thailand. "Long ride. Much money."

He told me he lived 30 minutes away in Richmond and how bad the roads were.

"Is there a Cambodian community?" I asked. "In Richmond?"

"Seven people."

"Do you know some of them?"

"Yes. All."

"Is there a large community here in Lexington?"

"Forty."

"Do you all get together?" I gathered my hands together, scooping air to help him understand and felt stupid and sorry.

"For New Year," he said. "Temple in Cincinnati."

"So you go there?"

"Yes."

He dried my feet and put lotion on them. He clipped my toenails which made me suddenly sorry again then placed my feet back in the water.

"Tell me about your home," I said.

"Farm," he said.

"I was raised on a farm," I said and perked up a bit more and sat straight up.

"Vegetables."

"Tobacco, corn."

"Lots of vegetables."

"Pigs. Cows. Chickens."

"Everybody take care of the mother, father, grandmother, grandfather."

"I miss my grandparents. My grandmother. My grandfather."

"In Cambodia parents, grandparents. Very important. Everybody takes care. Mother, father. Like God."

I stared out into space and then his eyes when he turned his head to the side. I had so many questions I wanted to ask about his mother, his father, his grandmother, his grandfather. But I didn't ask.

He painted each of my toes an opaque silver, the color I had chosen.

I thought about my grandparents as gods and nodded my head to myself this time and smiled. Gods.

Hong carried my purse, my coat, my shoes for me and placed them in a chair as I followed him to a small booth. He motioned for me to place my feet uner a small blow dryer like a small cave just for my feet. He turned it on and it blew warm air onto my feet.

He pulled on his coat and went out into the cold to smoke a cigarette. He spoke excitedly into a cell phone. I wished I knew what he was saying.

"You want manicure too?" a woman who worked with him said. "Full tip, acrylic." She stroked two of her own nails with an invisible brush to help me understand.

"No thank you," I said.

I flipped through a magazine.
I  thought about what family meant.
What my grandparents meant.
What my parents mean to me.
What I mean to my children.

I thought about what home means. I thought of the rolling hills of farmland. I wondered if  Hong knew mountains.

When Hong returned he touched two of my toenails to see if they were dry and then painted each one with a clearcoat.

"All done," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

"Merry Christmas," he and the salon owners, a man and a woman said in unison. They waved.

"Merry Chrstmas." I shook each of their hands.

I hugged Hong.

"Have a good new year." I said.