The last word on Olive Senior:

Dani: Over the Roofs of the World is a book to be read aloud. There's a heat in this book that hasn't shown up in the other GG contenders, which makes it an exciting read. Unlike Processional, Senior's book really gives us a sense of humid lives being lived, really lived. It's of a world being loved and shunned in a breath. A world to embrace and forsake at the same time.

And with all the talk of avian flu lately, it was nice to, well, like birds again. Olive's candid observations on different species of birds definitely seem to be a metaphor for humans and our tics. In "The Secret of Crusoe's Parrot," the parrot in question becomes the teacher of other "poor dumb creatures in the trees." The parrot, like the humans he traveled with, does not embrace the land that they've invaded, and does not respect the current inhabitants, merely seeing them as "uncivilized". In the end, the parrot realizes that once Crusoe is no longer his master, he'll "have to find my place again / among my own, go back to playing dumb." It's hard to go back to being the average man, or in this case, parrot.

And the rest of the book is as metaphorically sound as this, and hits the senses heavy with rhyme and solid imagery: "Come walk with me in the latest style: / rockstone and dry gully." There is an underlying urgency to these poems. Some political, others pulling on facts the past - there is something to be learned from most of them. However, there are times, like in the prose poem "Emperor Penguin", where the lessons overshadow the poetics. In "Emperor's Penguin", we learn that the male emperor penguin incubates a single egg of two months while the female is off searching for food. This is what I found most interesting, and not what Olive was trying to say, that the consequences of not playing the cards you were dealt, could be dire: "With everyone dressing unisex, he / sometimes presses the wrong suit. The consequences could be / appalling."

However, in other poems, Senior slays me with her bold proclamations. In the short poem "Rooster," we find it's on the shoulders of one species yard fowl to keep the earth spinning, the days changing:

As long as a Rooster somewhere
is angry enough to claw at
the sun blood red rising and
pull it through, day will come:
the world will go on.

It's the short and succinct poems I like best from Senior. So much said in so few words. In only a few short lines, she tells us how to tame a wild parrot: "By gently blowing / Tobacco smoke / Over its beak / And laughing."

Minor grievances aside, I thought this was a solid collection from a poet I wish I'd known of earlier. Her style completely differs from others in contention for the GG, which I think gives her an edge.

Alex: I found this book quite a change of pace. A refreshing change of pace, for the most part. I'm sure some of that had to do with getting to go to Jamaica, but there's more to it than the exotic factor. Senior really brought her Jamaica to life: its language, history, people, folk tales, and landscape. This book has more place in it than any of the others, and I think that means something.

Another thing that struck me was how much of an oral performance it was. There's a strong sense of voice. It's even there in the bird calls (sounds, not words) and in the heavy use of internal rhymes. Stuff like

     objects

disappeared; the road slid from view,
voices sheared off as paths veered. Here

was the dark, the damp, the steadfast dew

I agree with Dani that it's a book to be read aloud, and I think it might in particular be a book to hear the author read aloud. I don't know what Senior's voice sounds like, but I have a hunch she does a good reading. Her writing has a momentum and music that none of the other poets have. She's also a bit of a storyteller, and there aren't many of them left in verse.

Poetry with a strong voice also tends to be more direct. There's something public about it. So this book also has a political edge the others don't. Now when you take all of this - the direct speech, politics, borrowings from traditional oral sources, heavy music, and narrative pull - and put it together it's easy to read it as being crude or unsophisticated. There were times when I felt the message was a little too preachy, obvious, or even cute. I could have done without Parrot and Bird. There's folk and then there's folksy.

However, I am a sucker for simple rhythmic (and emotional) effects:

Thinking               (for the first time in my life)
Thinking          I'm going to be alright
Thinking     The higher I climb the sweeter the air
Thinking the blues are getting lighter year by year.

This is a wonderful moment.

I wouldn't rate this the best book because it's quite inconsistent. Some of her poems come across as trite. The music isn't always there. Some of it is even written in prose. But there were real highlights.

Shane: Olive Senior is the only poet on the GG shortlist that I didn’t know. Which means I should have fewer preconceptions . . . 

Senior writes a kind of simplistic verse that’s heavily laden with symbols, primarily birds. She writes simply, directly, but not, I have to mention, very powerfully. Boiling poetry down to its elements is tricky, it’s like eating a recipe instead of a meal, and that’s the feeling I get from her poetry. All bones, no meat. There’s lots of this kind of talismanic stuff:

Discard the illusion of bearing yourself up. Only Bird,
     Sun’s messenger, can transport you. This is not
          about wings of power

(that will burn, melt) but the power of wings lent to you
     by Grandfather Macaw. If he chooses
          to hear you.

These poems read more like folk legends than they do as poems. Grandfathers and grandmothers are wise and have spiritual power. Anthropomorphic animals abound. 

The poetry also show recourse to abstract words as opposed to visceral, active ones:

Power will not come swiftly on the wing but feather out of
     the homage. The humility. The loving
          preparation. The desire . . . 

But perhaps I give this book too much credit by explaining it instead of just airing what I think: it is bad, an embarrassment even, one that shouldn’t have even been nominated. “The Secret of Crusoe’s Parrot” shows absolutely no sophistication in rhyme scheme:

Parrot through heavily-lidded eyes, watches as the new
     invader arrives. Friend or foe? Parrot doesn’t know,
          doesn’t care. Parrot is ruler of air.

When such obvious rhymes as these are used, you know the poet is in real trouble. Things can be simple, but surely not basic.

Senior has Caribbean roots and the only reason I can see for her inclusion on the shortlist is a multicultural one. It is not an artistic one - much of this book is anti-poetry. It is utterly dead, irredeemable. Shouldn’t your wrist get slapped if you write the following:

Your daily stance your warrior pose
against the Sun to vanquish foes.
Your virility glows . . . 

That’s bad enough, but now consider the fact that she was talking about a Hummingbird. A Hummingbird with glowing virility? I’d take Don McKay and his bird preoccupation any day over this roses-are-red clumsiness.

I couldn’t help but think of George Elliot Clarke’s Execution Poems when reading this book. Clarke’s book was comfortable with black vernacular, he in fact exploded that vernacular, he mined it for richness, he made slang exquisite. Senior’s stuff just seems dumbed-down, sing-songy, and habitually rhyming in a stupid way when she actually attempts poetry. The rest of the book is comprised of bland prose recountings of legend and story. As an example, “Emperor Penguin”:

The Emperor Penguin stands sentinel to progeny in the dark
Antarctic winter. Two months solitary on the Great Ice Barrier
incubating a single egg in the fold of the skin between his legs.
By the time his mate returns from her long eating spell
to relieve him, he’s but a shadow of his former self.
Such parental cooperation!

Where, I ask, is the poetry in this? This is descriptive without being evocative, there is no heightened sense, no metaphor - it’s bare-bones stuff, pre-publication stuff, a trashcan draft. Poetry isn’t about story, it’s about how the story is told. Senior has it backwards.

I believe that this book is offensive in its sheer amateurishness.

Alex: But what did you really think about it Shane?

Shane: Come on, Dani. Heart? The only heart in this book is one of cheese. And the humidity you mention is provided only by the setting of her poetry - it's like you're giving her points for exotic locale, and that's not fair.

This book is bad. In reading both of your replies, I'm reminded of the vague comments that juries usually give about winning books. Dani, you say "And the rest of the book is as metaphorically sound as this, and hits the senses heavy with rhyme and solid imagery." That could have been lifted from a dust jacket! You also call Senior bold. Well, if being boring while wearing the plumage of local colour is bold, then I guess I'm sold. Which is a rhyme courtesy of Senior.

Alex, for your part you say that Senior's book really makes her homeland come to life. I disagree. The characters are dull, but more importantly the writing is lackluster. I'll agree that there is more place in the book, but I'll argue that that's the point: we're supposed to like the book because of the place. Senior, like New, asks for special considerations.

Which I'm not willing to give.

Alex: Well, we disagree. Which is another way of saying you must be wrong. I think that poems like "Penny Reel," "White," and "Lacemaker," to take a few examples, effectively describe individuals within an environment. Dull? But the Lacemaker knows her life is dull, only daring to express her private thoughts at the end in parenthesis:

(What a waste
of good lace

What a waste 
of my lifetime).

As for our comments being vague . . . oh, it burns us it does! It burns! But really, I think a lot of your criticisms are equally impressionistic.

NEXT:  The jury deliberates . . .