Soul Culture

April 11, 2022
Poet Bingham-Risher (Starlight & Error) mines the experiences of Black writers in this jovial mix of memoir, essay, and homage to her literary “guiding voices.” Lyrical essays elucidate the themes that emerged from interviews she conducted over almost two decades with 10 Black poets. In “Imagining Home,” she explains how she found poetry “outside of song” as a fifth grader when a teacher read her class Langston Hughes’s “Mother to Son.” Soon thereafter, Bingham-Risher wrote her first poem, which won a prize. In “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” she bonds with Patricia Smith over a shared “lifelong obsession with music” both for its own sake and as poetry. Lucille Clifton, she notes in “Intimate Tending,” highlights that, for Black artists, “living is political whether we want it to be or not” and writes that that’s what she is “disappointed not to find in the writing of those without the birth-burden of double consciousness as part of their living and, hence, breath, breadth, and work.” The author’s own poems appear throughout, including one for her daughter that honors Black women’s names. It adds up to a powerful celebration of poets who “paint life with all its many spirals and errors.” Lit lovers will be dazzled.

July 1, 2022
Bingham-Risher pays homage to several African American poets who inspired her to become a distinguished, award-winning poet and essayist. She shares personal essays and interviews with 10 prominent Black poets who have made their mark on the literary scene since the Black Arts Movement, including Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, and E. Ethelbert Miller. The poets share their childhood memories, failures, successes, and intimate details never discussed with other interviewers. As for Bingham-Risher, she shares challenges she faced as one of very few Black students in a predominantly white community in Arizona and writes about how family, community, and books helped her grow. Black American poets were key to her success, and by explaining how their lives and poems changed her life, she illuminates their voices, lives and paths, triumphs and tragedies. Cover-to-cover, Soul Culture will start a discourse about Black poets and writers and Black books, and it is highly recommended for those who love poetry and Black literature, especially readers striving to become creative writers and hone their poetry-writing skills.

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September 1, 2022
Essays for poets and poetry lovers framed by personal narratives and interviews with Black poets who have influenced the author in her life and career. In her latest book, Bingham-Risher champions literacy, writing, and teaching as acts of love and social responsibility. The author emphasizes the work that spoke to her early on and led her to mentors like E. Ethelbert Miller, Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Natasha Trethewey, and a host of other significant writers who fueled her burgeoning career. She recounts her life through the lens of poetry, asking vital questions: What is the Black poet's responsibility as a writer? To the community? To the self? Each interview offers something to ponder. Bingham-Risher recounts how poetry softened the blow of personal and political hardships, enriched her education, and "grew her up." Some essays, like the ones linked with the author's interviews with Patricia Smith and Tim Seibles, are cohesive and sharply rendered, while others are meandering. The author doesn't deeply explore each topic she addresses; the narrative operates at a loosely associative level, the voice and persona of the narrator remaining somewhat elusive. Nearly every experience--e.g., marrying the love of her life, a chance meeting with children's book author Eloise Greenfield, coping with personal losses--is expressed in the same register. This sometimes creates a static reading experience, and some chapters get bogged down or brush too lightly over important territory, including Black Lives Matter, the death of Sandra Bland, and the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The book is strongest when the personal narrative is sharper, as when Bingham-Risher writes about her daughter's unique name, the tragic tale of a good friend who was killed by police in Phoenix, or her family's biannual The Color Purple breakfast, a festive, all-day affair of cooking, mentoring, and honoring elders. Still, Bingham-Risher asks questions of poetry, community, and responsibility that will inspire both seasoned and aspiring poets and educators. A love letter to Black literary art that leaves you wanting more.

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