Full Description
Crystal Simone Smith's new poetry collection, Runagate, reimagines the experiences of enslaved and formerly enslaved persons in a stark and chilling response to the archives of chattel slavery: bills of sale, interviews, narratives, and fugitive runaway ads. Embodying the aesthetics and Japanese poetic forms haiku and tanka, her poems bear witness to the brutal and horrifying treatment of enslaved people and contrast their humanity with the inhumanity of their enslavers. In these poems, fugitive persons evade slave patrol hounds by climbing magnolia trees, use the cover of night and the detritus of a shipwreck to swim to freedom, and find temporary refuge in a cabin where a woman offers bread and water. Throughout, Smith poignantly envisions their flights to freedom-passages that were fueled by love, hope, and impossible dreams. She unceasingly gives voice to those who found courage in both bondage and freedom. In Runagate, the enslaved regain their stories and return to the sensory world.
Contents
Foreword / Ce Rosenow xiii
Prefatory Note xix
Prologue. Runagate: What to the Slave Is the Semiquincentennial? 1
Freedom on the Move: Rediscovering the Stories of Self-Liberating People
Haiku Sequences
Henry & Maria 5
Jemmy 7
Lucy 9
Asko or Glasgow 11
Clinton 13
Jack (and Paul) 15
Peter 17
Dave 19
Grace (and Tom) 21
Mariah Frances 23
Peggy 25
John Bull 27
Austin 29
Ely or July 31
Robbin 33
Sam 35
Anderson 37
Emily 39
Harriett, Bella, Elsey, and Milly 41
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 1
Tanka
hard worked days 44
one pair of shoes 45
we spent nights 46
for breaking dishes 47
oh my brother's 48
dead slave woman 49
the worst sales- 50
hit in the head 51
our mama cooked 52
Mistress Mary was kind 53
I was awakened 54
day the Yankees came 55
I had sixteen children 56
Smithfield slave market 57
allowed no pleasures 58
Master made me go 59
we worked winter 60
Christmas Eve 61
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, Part 2
Tanka Sequences
Ain't You My Child 64
After the Stars Fell 66
Confederate Lieutenant Robert Walsh 68
Joe High 69
Sarah Anne Green 70
Essex Henry 72
Epilogue. Haibun for Ancestor Ernestine Turner (b. 1827) 75
Acknowledgments 77
Freedom on the Move: A Note 79
