Lanier teacher Van G. Garrett’s poems fueled by emotion, experimentation
From boxing and pitbulls to the pull of friendship and the vicissitudes of love, Van G. Garrett’s poetry plumbs the depths of disappointment to the simple soaring joys of flying a kite. The poet, who is a teacher at Lanier Middle School by day, has recently released two new collections.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Houston Baptist University and a master’s in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Houston-Victoria, and was the first UH student to receive a graduate certificate in African American Studies. He has been a prolific poet and won the Texas Association of Authors’ 2017 Best Book of African American Poetry award for his chapbook “49: Wings and Prayers,” filled with Kwansaba poems, an African American poetic form in which each poem is 49 words. Based on the principle of seven, these are usually poems of praise, created during the rise of the black arts movement along with the beginning of Kwanzaa.
In “Pit-Bulls and J-Walks,” Garrett continues his interest in what he calls “compact poems,” aiming for accessibility and conveying “a lot in a small space.” For example, in “Everyday,” he uses one noun and one adjective to convey the objects, but the adjectives shift with the days: “Jeans—cuffed/J’s—scuffed/ Dog—loved/Me—good,” is followed by “Dog—good/Me—loved/ J’s—rough/Outside—tough.”
But these simple guttural utterances are deceptive. Like Gwendolyn Brooks’ famous “We Real Cool,” it often takes few words to express the state of our lives. Garrett also addresses the issues of race, aggression and the prejudice that intersects between pit bulls and people. In the poem “I Know,” he muses “What they say about pit-bulls/ The same thing that they say about minorities: We’re dangerous …”
There are also poems of confession, such as “Crush,” in which he writes, “I think Jennifer only comes over/To rub PupPup’s belly” as a way to show masculine vulnerability in a world that expects men to be tough. But the common denominator among the poems is a simultaneous yearning for both freedom and connection: The speaker in “Set Free” has to
“kick like/I’m breaking out of a cocoon.” From romantic love to friendship to anxiety over the stereotyping that threatens freedom of movement and expression, the collection aims to confront difficulties without abandoning the need to move forward.
In “Water Bodies,” Garrett continues his experimentation with form with the Kwansaba poem “Spice Apples” that graces the back cover: there was a time when you made spice apples—golden in an oven’s mouth your hair wrapped—you wore my shirt as we sat in the small space choppy waves became stilled and scented peace love came in like a quiet storm you tried your hardest—i did too
Garrett is indeed interested in the “small space,” saying he is heavily influenced by Asian culture and literature and that he appreciates its grace and simplicity.
“I don’t believe in elevated language,” he says, because he wants the reader to access his poetry, and he admires Japanese forms such as tanka and haiku, poems in which the brevity often underscores the intensity of their message. Garrett is a master of plain truths without the fussiness of flowery language. In his definition poem “Adolescence,” youth are “skinny-legged flamingos” and “awkward blobfish”:
We so badly wanted to grow old many did some didn’t occupational hazards accidents God’s work hell-bent.
Garrett’s world is explainable, even if not always confessed and kept in the realm of memory. In “Hooked Gator Eagle Lake,
TX” , there is striking imagery such as “snagged alligator — dark meaty hind legs/ one crooked like a broken hoodoo foot/dragged unto muddy banks” and later in the poem, “rookeries unhinged/ stamped boots cracked skies like lightning.”
One of the most moving poems in “Water Bodies” is “Ancestors.” Here Garrett considers the influence of our ancestors, both familial and artistic, and how our moral traditions and grids are rooted in them: “i want to make my ancestors proud/ robes like feathers on sultan chickens/shouting i knew he’d
make it” and then, later in the poem, “i’d planned and prayed to give up/devilment/ no more disturbing the neighbor’s honey bees/no more lying at school no disobedience/felt waves rushing over me: newness/ felt i’d made God proud.”
In “Kites,” Garrett explores the chasm between the innocence and emotions of childhood and the reality of adulthood: “adult emotions stirred and/ churned like feet climbing hills/ in search of something/ a kite-like feeling/when we talked up the sun/ a patchwork of moments/ stretched like starfish/ without strings attached.”
An international artist whose art and poetry have been noted around the globe, Houston may have not sufficiently appreciated this prolific poet who has eclectic poems that follow a trajectory of lyricism and experimentation. Van G. Garrett’s understated simplicity is a welcome contribution to American contemporary verse.