Woman Talking Woman

Darleen R. Golke is a teacher and librarian at Fort Richmond Collegiate
in Winnipeg.

Tynes, a Maritime poet and teacher, and the 1988 Milton Acorn People’s
Poet of Canada award winner for Borrowed Beauty, presents her second
collection, focusing on women, politics, and race. She speaks strongly
and passionately with a Nova Scotia, African-Canadian, feminist voice.

Tynes often uses the oral technique of repeating words and phrases,
successfully in poems like “Woza Mandela” and “A Kid Moves Through
the System,” unsuccessfully in “For the Montreal Fourteen” and
“Africville.” Her poetic voice expresses its outrage at racism
harshly in “Racism” and “Africville,” gently in “The Call to
Tea,” which longs for “some Black and Native time” when “the
rain of racism falls / and finds no waiting hearts.”

Tynes is at her best when she uses new and unique imagery and language.
For example, “Are We Having Fun Yet?” humorously captures a travel
experience, with an image of “our eyes and hearts and souls snapping
up shots everywhere like two whole-body Kodaks.” Unfortunately,
however, many of these poems lack the “finished” touch. “Death
Watch,” for instance, treats death with flat, clichéd images:
“grief enters and walks upright in the room,” and the “hollow weep
and call of grief.”

Three stories conclude this collection. The best, “For Tea and Not
for Service,” like the poem “The Call to Tea,” focuses on racism
through the experiences of a black Maritime opera singer. Invited to tea
by a Halifax society hostess because of her “high stock on the social
register,” she notes that “not one of the Imperial Daughters had
spoken to their dusky guest of honor since her arrival.” One of the
society ladies later comments, “it was hard not to ask her to go down
to the cellar to fetch a scuttle of coal.”

Tyne’s passion for justice, her pride in her heritage, and her
feminist views blend best with her poetic voice when the images are
fresh and vital. However, many of these selections would benefit from
some revitalizing.