Title: Soulful Sounds
Author: John R. Jackson
Genre: Poetry
Publisher: Exposition
Published: 1973
This slim volume of poetry by an unknown writer who never gained any
recognition was published in 1973, the author's first and last
publication (as far as I could see, that is).
I am sometimes
intrigued by battered-looking, unknown books that no one has heard of.
That was why I bought this one, even though I truthfully didn't expect
to like it. I am very picky about poetry, and besides that, the inside
cover advertised that Jackson wrote solely for a Black audience. As a
blue-eyed white girl, I wasn't sure if I was the right audience. I do
find Civil Rights issues and racial prejudice interesting, but it isn't a
subject I usually go looking for.
The first part of this book,
which focuses on the author's African heritage, the history of his
people, and the racism and prejudice he faces, was indeed interesting
but not riveting.
Besides my feeling that he was speaking to someone
else, I was a bit unsettled by the underlying feeling of the poems,
that Jackson was trying to apologize for being black, making it sound as
though his race was the problem, rather than racism itself.
Also,
he seemed to be fond of letting out a string of names, sometimes taking
up over half a dozen lines. It annoyed me. Aretha Franklin and Martin
Luther King Jr. have entire poems written in their tribute, as well as
James Brown, who gets the longest one.
The other parts of the
book involve romance, patriotism, broken hearts, and miscellaneous work.
His more personal poems, in which he was speaking of his own life and
not trying to be a voice of an entire race, were surprisingly touching. I
must slip in the disclaimer that I am not the best poet critic, as I
don't know much about the rules. I just read poetry like the average
person and judge it on how it strikes me.
Jackson writes of love
lost, of a painful divorce, of the elation and longing of love, of war,
and of sorrow at the corruption he sees in the world.
There is a
beautiful poem dedicated to his brother-in-law, who fought in World War
II, as well as a failure of a poem called "Secretary," which was
laughably cheesy.
I couldn't help but wonder, from his poems, who
his "Helen" was in real life. He mentions a forbidden romantic interest
in a few of his poems who is obviously a white woman (he describes her
"fair" skin and "flaxen hair"), and I wondered what the story might be.
The
writing is poignantly unpolished, his occasional grammatical errors
only adding to a sense of sing-song, blues sound. You can easily imagine
a singer with a raspy, rich voice starting to sing the lines of
Jackson's poems at any moment.
I enjoyed this book of poetry more
than I thought I would. And, I opened it to see the author's signature,
which I hadn't known was there when I bought it.
