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Unwilling, myself, to damn men in general for the evil done by some men in particular, I was better able to attend to Baldwin's harsher messages for the sake of her ability to celebrate sexual love, either in good-natured poems such "The Good Sex Guide" or moving ones like "For the Love of Glenda". It is in "The Good Sex Guide", by the way, that the book's title makes its appearance, as a description of serviceable underwear. Baldwin's attitude to many things with good and evil potentials is summed up for me in the opening lines of "A Note on the Kitchen Table". It isn't alcohol I am against The books' greatest charm lies in its character portraits. To paraphrase these might spoil them. The most moving for me personally was "Nalini's Feet", which brought back to life a friend unfairly lost much too young. Other jewels are "Totally Cool Super-Nun" and "Bit of a Bogguh All Roun' Innit". Maybe any artist's greatest achievement is not to strike a resonance with like minded people, but to drive a wedge of understanding or at least toleration into resistant readers. It is from this point of view I must evaluate what I will, for lack of better understanding, call Baldwin's naturalism. I liked the cow with an attitude in "What is in This Milk?", and no doubt the development of bovine growth hormone is strongly supported by "profiteers". I cannot personally follow where Baldwin leads, however, in those poems that echo the book's opening quote from Juvenal more as a matter of faith than of persuasion.
"Never does nature say one
thing, Juvenal, Satires, (c.100) 14.21 It is a credit to the poet that my reading improved my appreciation for this worldview. Baldwin's best gift to other writers also stems from faith: her faith in writing as a meaningful, intensely human instrument for understanding the difficult, wonderful process of living. Her irreverence for dead jerks, windy professors and money-grubbing antler salesmen all point to a commanding personal morality intolerant of |
