The bravado of Amanda Yskamp’s “A+” seems a fitting poem in
the wake of the city of Boston taking back control from the terror of the
Marathon Bombers. Exploration of Yskamp’s prose poem published in the Birmingham
Poetry Review
volume 40 comes as the Steiny Road Poet marks twenty-one days in a row of
supporting the work of contemporary poets and a particularly remarkable
literary journal where every detail down to the high-quality paper has been
attended to by editor-in-chief Adam Vines. Here is the first half of the poem:
Because my first grade teacher
misspelled words, and I was faster than my math master at some sums, could see
beyond the window of U.S. history out to where the snow fell on a farther
field, I knew bullshit walks, the smartass wins an honest kiss, rebellion is a
Boston birthright, born in the heart of a young country that a show must be
made of the cause.
Because
the narrator is concerned about misspelled words, one gets clued in early that
she cares about words in general. Poetic play is seen in her near or exact
homophonic alliterations—math master
and some sums.
In the
second half of the poem to show her Boston born rebellion, she “unlatched the
cages to let the mice run loose, burned the janitor’s shoes, put a voodoo hex
on [her] French teacher, gave him Hep, oui,
je l’ai fait.” Why? Because she felt he acted snobbish—“for his tightassed
class distinctions.” Her last act of rebellion is to make a blood sisterhood “in
a carnal wish to break from the body.” So in this poem, we have female rebel
who steps up and admits what she has done (yes, I did it— oui, je l’ai fait) and defiantly takes a knife to the thumbs of
the girl who encircle her. “A+” is a poem bursting with the kind of
energy expected of young men and therefore brings an additional burst of
surprise and pleasure.
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