Book Review :: à genoux by Morgan Christie
Review by Jami Macarty
In the chapbook à genoux, the “soft words” of Morgan Christie’s poems respond to Virginia Chihota’s intimate, folkloric artworks. à genoux, from the French “on one’s knees,” is the focus of both the poet and the artist who consider the various reasons and calls to bend a knee, ranging from protest to prayer.
Which gesture of kneeling has to do with willing supplication and which power dynamics?
how soundly the reason fumbles
from the tellings and retellings
they all took knees before
but only when they were told (“—white lines”)
When we “hear someone yell / get down on your knees” we know we are not being told “to pray.” To “recognize the distinction” between “having to bend” and wanting to “means to understand the sacred.” Ultimately, “longing for what is ours is why we keel.”
As Christie is brought to her knees by the history of subjugation, she bows to the strength of family. When “we think of kneeling / we don’t have to be on our own.”
Indeed, in à genoux, Morgan Christie and Virginia Chihota “kneel together” as “the truths” of their words and colors draw a warm “blended bath / of change.”
Gentle Reader, regardless of what Auden wrote, together Morgan Christie’s poetry and Virginia Chihota’s paintings make something happen. So does Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, who made this stunning, full-color chapbook!
à genoux by Morgan Christie; artwork by Virginia Chihota. Black Sunflowers Poetry Press, April 2023.
Reviewer bio: Jami Macarty is the author of The Long Now Conditions Permit, winner of the 2023 Test Site Poetry Series Prize, forthcoming fall 2024, and The Minuses (Center for Literary Publishing, 2020), winner of the 2020 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award – Poetry Arizona. Jami’s four chapbooks include The Whole Catastrophe, forthcoming summer 2024 from the Vallum Chapbook Series, and Mind of Spring (Vallum, 2017), winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. To learn more about Jami’s writing, editing, and teaching practices visit her author website.
