Horn Book Review
(High School) A series of fifty-nine poems portrays George Washington Carver (c.1864-1943) as a private, scholarly man of great personal faith and social purpose. Nelson fills in the trajectory of Carver's life with details of the cultural and political contexts that shaped him even as he shaped history. Rescued from slave-stealers in Missouri, the orphaned black infant is raised by the white couple who owned his mother. He earns advanced degrees, opens the agriculture department at Booker T. Washington's all-black Tuskegee Institute, and is recognized by the National Agricultural Society and the Royal Society for the Arts. Throughout his life, he teaches, he paints, he dreams. In the final poem, Carver dies as the Tuskegee Airmen (among them the poet's father) make ""a sky-roaring victory roll"" in the Alabama sky. Some poems adopt a specific narrative voice to imagine Carver as ""our little plant-doctor""; as a ""spindly ten-year-old, alone / and a stranger in town, here to go / to our school for colored children. / His high peep brought tears: / sleeping in a barn and all that, / nary mama nor kin, / but only white folks / he left with their blessing, / his earthly belongings / in a handkerchief tied to a stick""; as the visionary who ""talked about lilies of the field, about feeding the multitudes with the miracle / of the peanut and the sweet potato""; or as the celebrated inventor whose ""products and processes / are being used. Discovered / by the war machine. The Professor is humbled. / He sees how disaster is seeded with triumph, how / a man is purified by despair."" Nelson casts other poems in the measures of Carter's inner voice, thus rendering the keen observations of a scientist in the arresting images of an artist. As a single poem whose description of a lynching calls all readers to witness racism's corrosion of body and soul, ""The Perceiving Self"" also acts as the book's central metaphor. Occasionally, the poems, many of which previously appeared in poetry journals, are enhanced by black-and-white photographs or dates bearing understated captions. As individual works, each poem stands as a finely wrought whole of such high caliber that one can hardly name a favorite, never mind the best. Each adds another stroke to the emerging portrait of a single life fully lived. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
One of the very few black Americans accorded great respect before the 1960s was botanist and educator George Washington Carver (1864?^-1943). In a fine biography in poems, Nelson beautifully and movingly revives his reputation, made to seem paltry compared with that of such resuscitated firebrands as Garvey, Robeson, and DuBois. She traces Carver from his recovery after being kidnapped in infancy to his death while the famous Tuskegee airmen fill the campus on which he had worked since 1896 with the droning of aircraft. The life in between is characterized by hard work, intellectual curiosity, personal humility, devotion to the betterment of black Americans, enormous self-possession, and practical Christian piety. Nelson stints none of those characteristics in depicting Carver as good but not self-righteous, dedicated but not monomaniacal, invaluable but not self-important. She also renders Carver's context nontendentiously, in some poems conjuring racism at its worst and in others showing that particular whites helped Carver throughout his life. Historic photos illustrate Nelson's work with modest beauty. --Ray Olson
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6 Up-By offering glimpses into George Washington Carver's life story through a series of lyrical poems, the structure of Nelson's book is as inspired as its occasional use of black-and-white photographs as illustrations. The poems are simple, sincere, and sometimes so beautiful they seem not works of artifice, but honest statements of pure, natural truths ("The Prayer of Miss Budd" and "Lovingly Sons," in particular). Ironically, the book's greatest strength, its writing, is also occasionally its weakness. In a few of the poems the language and the structure seem haphazard and these selections come across as underwritten ("Odalisque," "1905") or as little better than notes for selections yet to come ("Driving Dr. Carver," "Letter to Mrs. Hardwick"). Still, students will find much to glean from this volume and many of the poems will be perfect for reading aloud and make good monologues. A final grace note: the book will undoubtedly encourage some young people to learn more about this remarkable man.-Herman Sutter, Saint Agnes Academy, Houston, TX (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
