Seasonal Fires: New and Selected Poems [Paperback]

Ingrid de Kok's "Seasonal Fires" (Seven Stories Press, 2006) is a masterpiece! I am not a big fan of poets who crank out "Greatest Hits" of their work mid-way through their careers; wait until its over for the "selected" editions to come out. But I reconsidered that after reading this book.

I recall read some time ago an interview by Salman Rushdie saying that the real exciting literature being written in the 1990s was to be found in the ex-Colonies, Post-Colonies, of the world. And I, like many young Americans, am less familiar with the world's Post-colonial poets as I should be. Rushdie was, of course, right. South Africa's Ingrid de Kok writes not just about life under South African apartheid but also the shame and conflict that its post-apartheid world has created. de Kok's poems in "Body Maps" (the new selection of her work) range with titles like "Reparation," "Too Long a Sacrifice," "Child Stretching," "Death Notices" and "Kalahari Campsite." Each poem I turn to holds a sense of pressing dread, urgent anticipation and yet there is brutal optimism, even humor, here as well.

I recall reading in college the Nobel Laureate J.M. Coetzee's book "Disgrace" (1999) and not getting it. True, the male protagonist was unappetizing and hard to sympathize with as he womanized his way through the story. But the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that caused him and all those around him to do the things he did? I knew nothing about that so I could not understand his motives. And if you don't understand the purpose of the Commission or if you forget your history and pretend other things happened during South Africa's dark years, then, as de Kok says concerning the removal of the monuments of apartheid's architects such as H. F. Verwoerd, in "Bring The Statues Back:"

Let's put Verwoerd back

on a public corner like a blister on the lips;

let's walk past him and his moulded hat,

direct traffic through his legs,

and the legs of his cronies of steel and stone. (142 - 43)

I think there is a horrible splendor in those lines. And while it is a world I have never experienced first hand, the poet speaks again and again of it as a world of hope and wit as well. In "Words of Love," speaking of the differences between men and women, de Kok notes, "No woman ever says,/ 'It's in the pipeline'/ even in countries with large oil reserves/ and women on the rigs" (38 - 39) That is, as Shelby would say, worth the price of admission alone.

If you will buy one book of poetry this year, make it Seasonal Fires."