Anthology Edited by Carol Alexander and Stephen Massimilla Reviewed by Hilary Sideris

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Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice

Edited by Carol Alexander and Stephen Massimilla

Review by Hilary Sideris

Publisher: Cave Moon Press

ISBN-13: ‎978-0979778582

Publication date:  March 16, 2022

Page Count: 290 pages

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Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice, a new anthology edited by Carol Alexander and Stephen Massimilla, features eighty-four contemporary poets—among them, Kim Addonizio, Elizabeth Alexander, Ellen Bass, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Toy Derricotte, Rita Dove, Cornelius Eady, Major Jackson, Kevin Young, and Natasha Tretheway—many of whose poems bear witness to the reality of living in an unjust society, including the physical and mental damage we all must weather. The volume comprises subsections, each of which focuses on an overarching theme such as compassion, protest, personal struggle, or education. As an educator who has worked for years with underserved students—immigrants and graduates of New York’s less selective public schools—I am pleased to see so many teachable poems: poems that don’t flinch from telling the truths our students know. The diverse voices represented in Stronger Than Fear invite us, especially in the anthology’s largest subsection, to engage on a visceral level with racism, sexism, and other forms of hate, and to experience the joy that poetry and healing can bring, even in this world of intense suffering. For the purposes of this short review, I will focus on these themes.

In “Homeland,” a poem about divided identity, Jaswinder Bolina describes his own conception in a Punjab village — and his subsequent Americanization and alienation: 

…the Americans tell me

you’re an American if the first gulp you ever take

is of the American air above the American earth,

and so I became an American and spoke

and swaggered as an American, and everywhere I go,

I’m greeted as an American except in America

where the Americans still see the village in my skin…

Rather than lament, this poet swaggers through his origin story, defying those who would limit him by defining him, declaring, “Now who will say / go back where you came from?” (42). 

Mervyn Taylor’s “Gum” cleverly investigates the symbolism of masculine gum chewing in WW2 movies, “a sign of staying calm while bullets whizzed / overhead, a symbol of the kindness of GI’s, / as they passed out sticks of it to wide-eyed kids.” Taylor contrasts the chewing jaws of heroic American GIs with those of the videotaped police officer who “kept / chewing” as George Floyd “called to his deceased mother / that he was dying.” Taylor tells us that a gum chewer also took part in a recent ambush, when police mistakenly broke into a Black woman’s house and surrounded her as she emerged from the shower: 

And though the sergeant used his jacket to cover

her shoulders, she’ll never forget their faces,

especially the one who never stopped smiling

and chewing gum, who never once looked away. (101) 

This American mastication suggests a gnawing emptiness and desperation for power, a hunger that can’t be appeased. Taylor underscores the absurdity of the situation simply but brilliantly with the woman’s words: “Wrong house, you got the wrong house!”

“No one will say, ‘She looks like she’s sleeping,’ ropes / of blue-black slashes at the mouth,” Toi Derricotte writes in “On the Turning Up of Black Unidentified Female Corpses” as the poet considers her disposability as a person whose death won’t hold the attention of law enforcement for long, if at all. She asks for a reality check: “Am I wrong to think / if five white women had been stripped, / broken, the sirens would wail until / someone was named?” before confessing that she, too, walks over the bodies, “pretending they are not mine, that I do not know / the killer, that I am just like any woman—/ if not wanted, at least tolerated.” As a Black female, what are her options? Should she pretend all is well? Bury herself in despair? Somehow she resists both temptations. Like the shovel, the pen is a good tool for digging—and bringing what’s been buried to the surface: 

Part of me wants to disappear, to pull

the earth on top of me. Then there is this part

that digs me up with this pen

and turns my sad black face to the light. (54-55)

In “A Small Needful Fact,” Ross Gay flips the narrative of about Eric Garner, who repeated the words “I can’t breathe” eleven times before dying, while officers held him in an illegal chokehold. Gay informs us that Garner once worked for Parks & Recreation, in the Horticultural Department, and in this role, “with his very large hands,”

perhaps, in all likelihood,

he put gently into the earth

some plants which, most likely, 

some of them, in all likelihood

continue to grow, continue

to do what such plants do, like house

and feed small necessary creatures,

like being pleasant to touch and smell,

like converting sunlight

into food, like making it easier

for us to breathe. (60)

Gay’s repetition of the words “in all likelihood” may sound like an insignificant chant of protest compared to “I can’t breathe,” but the technique has the healing effect of a mantra. By focusing on the possibilities entailed by Garner’s employment at the Parks Department, Gay opens our eyes to the fact of Eric Garner’s life, not only his death, and to the idea that what he planted might still grow.

Among its many other virtues, Stronger Than Fear is full of such epiphanies, highlighting the power of poetry to enchant us through revealing small, often painful, facts in artful and surprising ways. It opens intimate doors to lives we couldn’t otherwise know. 

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Carol Alexander earned her PhD in American Literature from Columbia University. Since then, she has worked in the field of education, first as a university lecturer, then as a writer and editor specializing in educational publishing. She is the author of Fever and Bone (Dos Madres Press, 2021), as well as two other poetry collections. Her work appears in The Journal of American Poetry, Canary, The Common, Caesura, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, Matter, Mobius, One, Pif, Potomac Review, Ruminate, Southern Humanities Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Stonecoast Review, Sweet Tree Review, Terrain.org, Third Wednesday, Verdad, The Westchester Review, and elsewhere.

Stephen Massimilla is a poet, painter, and author, most recently of FRANK DARK (Barrow Street Press, 2022). His multi-genre COOKING WITH THE MUSE (Tupelo Press, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Award and many others. Previous books and honors include THE PLAGUE DOCTOR IN HIS HULL-SHAPED HAT (SFASU Press Poetry Prize); FORTY FLOORS FROM YESTERDAY (Bordighera Poetry Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize; a study of myth in poetry; and award-winning translations. His work appears in hundreds of publications from AGNI to Poetry Daily. Massimilla holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia and The New School. Website: Stephenmassimilla.com

Hilary Sideris coaches English instructors and develops curriculum for CUNY Start, a program for underserved students at the City University of New York, where she taught for many years. She is the author of Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay Books 2019), The Silent B (Dos Madres Press 2019), and Animals in English, poems after Temple Grandin (Dos Madres Press 2020). Her most recent poetry collection, Liberty Laundry (Dos Madres 2022), was recommended by Small Press Distribution. Her poems have appeared recently in The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, OneArt, Poetry Daily, Right Hand Pointing, Salamander, Sixth Finch, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. 

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1 March 2023