Jesus is compared to a mother in 'Define: Mother' where he must deal with his followers 'tug/ tug, tugging at his hems.' In the opening sonnet, the speaker's mother finds 'the perfect/ verse to help me understand that vengeance/ against boys who didn't call was the Lord's.' Three 'Patricide Epistles' bring us a view of an absent father whose memory the speaker is trying to erase as she lies about his death in Vietnam or a drunk driving accident. The mother and the father are recurring themes in the book, and their authority is wrapped up in religious belief. The speaker craves the attention of the mother, but compares herself to the 'little white kids' who 'wore their bruises like plastic dollar store sheriff's badges that gave them authority over any anguish in my mother's house.' The prose poem belies the difficulty in navigating a world where children's troubles are measured and considered in terms what can be seen, like 'court documents falling out of a folder in the living room,' and what cannot, a 'conversation that ended' with a boy telling the speaker his parents wouldn't approve of a 'black girl.' There is also the prose poem 'A Foster Mother's Child,' the title giving hint to the complexity of relationships. Most of the remaining poems are short lined and lyrical, heavy with imagery as in 'Girl, 11' A mother looks to her bible, only for her and her daughter to laugh at God's wrath. Girls in bikinis are later covered in t-shirts to hide their bodies from boys' gazes. Summer camp nights of talking about boys turn into days of understanding the Rapture. After being swept into the larger picture, each repeated line in the crown becomes its own section for the rest of the book.īlues Triumphant takes the poem 'Rapture' and widens the sonnets' turns to take us from the forbidden to religion. The themes move from light mocking of religion to young love to racism to grief. There is the present, in Palm Beach, the past in Idaho, the future of the speaker's mother's death. The opening poem, a crown of sonnets titled 'Rapture,' is like seeing a huge Renaissance painting in a museum. Her opening crown of sonnets unravels into threads that tell the story of a woman's past, present and future, her relationships and musings.

Jonterri Gadson's Blues Triumphant is a crafted tapestry.

Review of Blues Triumphant by Jonterri Gadson