Three leaves, three roots Poems on the Haiti-Congo story

In this ambitious lyrical telling of the "Haiti-Congo story," poet and translator Georges combines documentary poetics, family narratives, and political history to illuminate the lives of Haitians who migrated to the Congo during the twentieth century. Drawing from published sources, more than a decade's worth of original interviews, and personal correspondence from her parents, Georges distills a century of harrowing facts into impactful, breathtaking poetry. "Power" unpacks a famous photograph of the notorious Haitian dictator, Jean-Claude Duvalier, driving to the airport to flee the country after a coup: "Jean-Claude / grips the wheel // with his hands / of death." Another poem catalogs the complicated lineage of Congolese place-names. For all the intersecting scholarly disciplines Georges explores, including "postcolonial studies, cross-border intellectual histories, Caribbean migration, Haitian transnationalism and identity," her most powerful lyrics are concise, direct, and stunning. "Hands Are a Matter" witnesses the brutal legacy of colonial Belgium: "The many hands required of the harvest. / And when the rubber does / not come? The hands themselves." "Diaspora" defines the sprawling concept in simple, freighted terms: "A sour dance. A heavy drum." This important historical and personal collection does justice to the complex tapestry of Haitian emigrant legacies.

Haitian-born Georges (emerita, creative writing, Lesley Univ.; Letters from Congo) illuminates a less-known chapter in the history of Pan-Africanism through her book of poems inspired by the recollections and letters of people who left Haiti in the 1960s to assist in the development of the newly decolonized Congo, including Georges's parents, professionals who emigrated under the auspices of the United Nations. Georges couples lyrical delicacy with the quiet strength of precision with prose poetry lines such as "the mind honed with its vision of unity" in the poem titled "In This Poem, Do Not Use the Word Revolution." In "Because," the former poet laureate of Boston enlivens the personal stories of sacrifice and sharing that "made Blackness / the mouth of freedom" and echo beyond the impersonal geopolitical narratives in which they're embedded. The final poem is especially noteworthy. VERDICT Georges's poems map the complexities of national identity with an immediacy especially relevant to the present day.--Fred Muratori