Side Notes from the Archivist

Anastacia-Reneé’s latest collection of poetry, Side Notes from the Archivist, begins with a retrospective examination of 1980s nostalgia through the lens of a young Black girl growing up in Philadelphia. Poems then bear witness to decades-long challenges faced by women—women in queer relationships, women of color, women over fifty, or women of certain religious beliefs.

To say the collection is fiery would be an understatement, but, as one poem points out, the world is full of fires these days. Although fires can spark new growth, there doesn’t seem to be much room for hope amid the embers here. The anger expressed is palpable and not misplaced; it is truth that springs from experience and decades of navigating life as some sort of “other.” As in Nikki Giovanni’s writing, rage explodes describing places where what people say and what people do are not always in line with the genuine reality of what should have been, and still needs to be done.

Arranged in five sections—Retrospecting, Retrofuckery, Retrolove, Retroblood, and Retrospect—the archivist has sorted poems best suited for each. Each poem is unique, often of free verse varied form, and some include side note explanations for the reader.

In “Shivering Womb” from the Retroblood section, witness a mother’s angry plea for justice for her children:

“Some days my own womb shivers at the thought of
My black-ass children being thrown
Against any wall
On top of any car hood
. . .
what it might feel like to feel like to only panic for myself
To only think of my own attack.”

And in the poem entitled “Ash” we are reminded of new generations born to a world of new vocabulary, new realities:

“If you were born
In the spring of
2020 you learned
Words like:
Pandemic/rona/mask/wipe/protest mask/
Quarantine/racism/overdose/shot/killed/bleach/murders/
No hugging/remote
Before you
could even
Say your own
Name”

The final poem in this unique collection, “What the River Taught Me (Flow),” offers a glimmer of hope in fine, symbolic prose semi-reminiscent of Marian Wright Edleman’s The Measure of Our Success. “1. If you are the river/you cannot drown (yourself) 2. Motion is not the same as movement (move) 3. To be a waterfall you have to fall. 4. There is submerge, there is emerge, there is merge.”

This, then, is the shared wisdom of the river, a beautiful message brought by the poet Anastacia-Reneé to remind us that the future is fluid and unpredictable, ugly and beautiful: “your life is the overlap of do something/and help/of make a difference/and rot while the world doesn’t ask you why/and doesn’t sing/ any songs you know by the end of the day/you soak your feet in a tub of isolation.”