One Last Word

Starred review from October 24, 2016
“Can I really find/ fuel for the future/ in the past?” asks Grimes (Words with Wings) in the opening poem of this slim, rich volume. Her answer is a graceful and resounding yes. Using the Golden Shovel poetic form, which borrows words from another poem and uses them at the end of each line in a new piece, Grimes both includes and responds to works from poets of the Harlem Renaissance, including Gwendolyn Bennett, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. Thus, a line from Georgia Douglas Johnson’s “Calling Dreams” (“The right to make my dreams come true”) provides “anchor words” (highlighted in bold) for Grimes’s “The Sculptor,” which emphasizes seizing what one desires (“Dreams do not come./ They are carved, muscled into something solid, something true”). Through a chorus of contemporary voices—including proud parents, striving children, and weary but determined elders—Grimes powerfully transposes the original poems’ themes of racial bias, hidden inner selves, beauty, and pride into the here and now. Interspersed artwork from African-American artists, including R. Gregory Christie, Brian Pinkney, and Elizabeth Zunon, and brief biographies of each poet flesh out a remarkable dialogue between past and present. Ages 10–14.

March 1, 2017
The vibrancy of the Harlem Renaissance is illuminated in Grimes's provocative poetry collection. In a tribute to the great poets of the era, she offers new verse with contemporary settings using an unusual form called Golden Shovel, in which each line of the new poem ends with one of the words in a line from the original. For example, from Langston Hughes's The Negro Speaks of Rivers she renders a poem about a son in a dwindled family who proclaims, I stand strong like / a tree my baby brothers can lean on. I try to be the / raft that helps carry them over this life's rough rivers. Themes of the new poems include self-pride, aspirations, bullying, and peer relations. A clean layout that juxtaposes each original poem with its new verse helps readers make thematic connections. In a framing device, a contemporary girl contemplating a world full of hate and fear revisits, on her teacher's advice, the powerful works of eight prominent Harlem Renaissance figures, including Gwendolyn Bennett, Jean Toomer, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Returning from her dip into the glory days of the Harlem Renaissance, she feels hopeful, reassuring her sister that life will be rough, / but we've got the stuff / to make it. The poems are complemented by original artistic interpretations by fifteen black artists (e. g., E. B. Lewis, Javaka Steptoe, Christopher Myers, Shadra Strickland) who offer absorbing and engaging images. This enterprising and unusual volume not only introduces the Harlem Renaissance to young readers but also presents the challenge of a new way to write and enjoy poetry. Poet and artist biographies, sources, and an index are appended. pauletta brown bracy

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