Michela A.

Calderaro Threshold to History Shara McCallum, This Strange Land1 Heres an invitation to enter Jack Mandoras Babylonian city of death and birth where the gatekeeper requires you pay your toll by telling a story or sing a song. A city of blood and bones, where crowds are drawn by Marleys beat, where memory must be kept suppressed to hold on to your sanity, and where velvety darkness promises comfort to your eyes. As in her previous collections McCallums poetry grips your mind and body, and you become a willing prisoner in a thrilling world of words, hoping never to be set free. Her poems are brimming with cross-cultural, historical, popular and literary references that challenge you, the reader. Poems communicate with other poems across the collection as well as with those in McCallums earlier books in an interplay of self-cross-referencing; but recall also works by other writers in a complex interaction of linguistic and literary evocations. An idea of what the reader may expect to find within is offered right away in the introductory poem, Psalm for Kingston. Psalm 137, chosen as epigraphy for the poem, If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, also closes it as in a chiasmus, changing line order with a sort of extended anastrophe:
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem

But Kingston is linked to the holy city of Jerusalem by other references. Jack Mandora, requiring a song to be admitted, echoes the lament of the Jews on the rivers of Babylon about they that carried us away captive required of us a song. The flames of Kingston fuse with Babylons own, and rise even higher, while the cry of Jerusalems exiled sons and daughters becomes that of Kingstons sons and daughters. Hence Kingston is the sum of the two cities -- holy and cursed land, paradise and inferno, place of redemption and of eternal damnation. McCallums new poems mark a terrific quantum leap in maturity, complexity and depth. Biographical details are introduced with fury into her poetry and more than in any of her previous collections her words appear to have been molded in a blacksmiths furnace. The collection appears to be a determined fusion of past and present, of general and personal history, towards a collective memory that would encompass all of us. Our guide through the circles of Jamaicas history is Miss Sally, McCallums grandmother, whom we met in Song of Thieves, and who represents wisdom in a world of folly. She is the witness who recounts stories and events, offering her opinion on political, social and general issues, drawing examples from Jamaican everyday life. She marks the division between the personal and the political/social, thus allowing the poet to keep the necessary distance from the pain inflicted by history, both national and personal. The poems tell the story of a country as reflected in the personal history of each character. There is a stratification and interlacing of national affairs (depicting political milestones); public figures, such as Bob Marley; and family history of father, mother, grandmother; all surrounded by violence and darkness that shrouds both the living and the land. This story is told by making use of, or just referring to, many different poetic genres from different traditions. It begins with a psalm, then introduces parables and pastorals, and the readers
1

Shara McCallum, This Strange Land, Farmington, Maine: Alice James Books, 2011.

involuntary memory is prompted to connect and recollect other works, either from McCallums previous collections or from other poets. Memory is the delicate thread that sews the poems together, and guides us through McCallums complex maze, from Mandoras Gate to the door of History. Loss, abandonment, love lost, motherhood, belonging or actually not belonging, and the implications of the necessary choices, are themes familiar to readers of McCallums poems since her memorable debut collection, The Waters Between Us. There, the figure of the mermaid was the embodiment of these implications and her tragic fate seemed to be the only possible outcome. Back then the Oracle had prophesized that the sea would never take her back, that there would be no return once the choice was made. Here, we witness the aftermath of that choice. In the poem The Mermaid, in the section entitled Fury, the quiet family scene -- with children going for a swim on a sunny day -- takes a sudden, horrifying turn:
[]. Only they see the mothers perfect dive into the waiting depth, the sliver of water opening to take her back.

And then, in From the Book of Mothers, perhaps one of the most intense poems in the collection, next to all other mythical mothers, the mermaid makes her final appearance. Here her story comes full circle, and the child seals the mothers choice, now that the sea has discarded the Oracles words and has indeed taken her back, to never let her go away again:
But here you surface again, scales glittering in the sun. With a flick of your tail, [] But you will never return to me. You, mermaid in question, of course have gone.

The mermaid, the ultimate mother, has gone, and we are left on dry land, wondering what the future will hold for us. We were led into the collection through a gate manned by Jack Mandora, and with an address to history; now at the close of this journey we are brought to the threshold of a room that holds both past and present (and, perhaps, the future), questions and answers. The room being history. We stand there with Shara McCallum, waiting for her to cross that door, looking forward to reading more, and soon.