Review of how to get over by t'ai freedom ford

by beyza ozer, guest book reviewer

Sometimes, when or if you are lucky enough, you can feel your soul touch with another. It can act as a jolt or a movement of tectonic plates: a shifting of the imagined truth that we all make up as human beings. This shift can be difficult to navigate, because with dissimilarities come flaws. But these flaws bring a chance to navigate the honesty within words, stories, pictures.

All of this comes through any poem in t'ai freedom ford's debut how to get over, a journey that travels through different periods of time to show how identity changes and stretches. how to get over brings awareness of peace while attempting to make connections between some of the most disturbing realities of this world: how humans survive, deceive, love, and die.

How can we try to make sense of it all? How some go out of their way to hurt because of their sprivileges in specific social hierarchies, or think that none of it matters? t'ai freedom ford uses her soft, lyrical voice to persuade readers toward change. how to get over is an instruction manual for the hopeless navigating uncomfortable personal spaces where the need to transform begins.

In “how to get over (senior to freshman),” ford writes,

as she knuckles herself up from chickenfeed, ain’t no need to run. instead smile for the video, that soul-clap in your chest is your heart.

The urgency in poems that revolve around issues that deal with abuse and sexuality compliments a certain tone that ford naturally has. Her poems move swift like wind while getting closer and closer to becoming hurricanes and set something off inside her readers, something golden and on fire.

Multiple lines are blurred in how to get over, making readers consider the relation of ford's poems to their own lives. Personal struggles with systemic oppression in the realms of race, sexuality, gender, and drug use are matched with a mastered grasp on the reality of how to persevere when it seems impossible to do so. From “how to get over (for Kardin Ulysse)”—

your walk is a beautiful tattletale. a big-mouthed bitch with whispery rumor on her breath snitching on your every step. ugly it up with swag and butch till it becomes a butchered two-step, an abandoned stagger: lifeless line of straight. your walk is a beautiful bowl of sugar. brown and crystalline. a slow melt on the tongue.

There is a sort of massacre of the heart that comes with these lines, and the determination within them shines proudly throughthe window of how to get over. ford articulates this through the usage of “you,” a force that is apparent throughout the collection to tie in the idea of how we all get over our oppression, pain, pasts, uncertainty—the list can go on and on.

Before we are able to meet this possibility, this freedom, this getting over, our work requires us to continue, as does the work of those who cause the reaction of getting over. And how can this logically happen? How can we be better, love better, and be stronger?

In “l-o-v-e”—

even with its selfish, gaping mouth always hungering for anything that throbs. even with its greedy hands that rob the day of light. even as it feeds on dust and flux and flails itself into dizzying orbit. even if i am but a speck in its memory—invisible. insignificant. in destructible. even if i am fucked from the outset: a willing victim longing to taste my own bloodsong. even with its inherent loss and injury—shattered bones, scabs, torn skin. even with all of its requisite failures. stops and starts. heart ripped and thrown to grinder. it is my only reminder that i breathe and bleed and need. even if this empty hand is my only success.

With her smooth sound of blues and rhymes that fill flowerpots with life, t'ai freedom ford reminds her readers that at some point, maybe when you aren't expecting it to come, a glint of faith is searching for you, too. We will all struggle with figuring out how to get over the evils that make existence, loss, and ache a reality of our time in a world, government, country that divides and excludes to profit.

But when we get there, when we come face to face with what haunts us, we will smile. For the video. For the soul clap that is heartbeat. For what brings us down. For what will not keep us there.

I know you down, when you gon' get up? I see you down, when you gon' get up?

#bookreview #beyzaozer #taifreedomford #howtogetover