January/February 2002
Still
Swinging-new and selected poems from These Hips
Tonya Maria Matthews
(is JaHipster!)
BlackWords Poetry Series 2001
ISBN # ISBN: 1-888018-17-8
Matthews is indeed "Still Swinging" as her title suggests in this collection of new and selected poems from These Hips and other Songs to Minista to a People's Soul. Still Swinging contains 21 poems and is divided into 5 sections "Swing Proud", "Swing Wide", "Swing Universal", "Swing Love" and "Swing Swing Swing". Born from the nineties poetic form known as Slam, these poems demonstrate that there is a renaissance of original thought, which is being woven into poetry that moves like a 200 horsepower car set on cruise control, to drive down anystreet USA at the speed of life.
With a poetic voice influenced by great masters such as the Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, Langston Hughs, Laini Mataka…the list goes on, Matthews juxtaposes the historical conflict of an ideal America with episodic snapshots of contemporary culture. These poems are laced with irony and a satirical edge that forced me to laugh out loud, nod my head in complete agreement, and catch my breath.
These poems peer into the realities of being marginalized, over commercialized, politicized, and characterized as being less than equal in America. In Grandma Get Your Gun Matthews writes:
"At every corner a new definition of Venus
fly trapping the children’s souls
swallowing their consciousness whole
convincing them the natural state of their spirit
is not beautiful"
Mathews doesn’t write to get along, but instead to bear witness to lessons learned before Africans became Americans and the contradictions of living in a culture that has forgotten the importance of embracing revolutionary ideologies and in love, revolutionary partnerships. In one of the few short poems in the collection, W.AR. (Worshipping.A.Revolutionary), she says I’ve always been a partner/ To a soldier;/ My first love was Shango/and though he may not recognize me/I’ll know/Him/ by the spear he carries.
The delight of this journey with Matthews is that you don’t leave with the feeling that she’s resigned to the way things are, or reckless. She’s more pragmatic than that as she chronicles the maladies of American culture such as in the painfully important poem, Trivial Pursuits, she admits, Yet in this world of trivia is where I stay/Playing games of trivial pursuits every single day, Thus I must make life my life via trivial means
But I shall not base this life on trivial things.
Linda Joy Burke is a poet and writer and
President of the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Writers’ Alliance.