Ward, Junious "Jay." Composition: Poems. Button Poetry, 2023. 116 pp. $21.00

One of the enduring lessons learned from writing comes from my community college days: embrace the challenge. I was a fresh flameout from my four-year institution and found myself on a new campus mere footsteps from my high school. My first semester I re-took English Composition because I received a ‘D’ the first time I took it. The class was more intensive than I expected, yet to my dismay then, I received a ‘B’ in the course. I was annoyed and, while I didn’t complain about my grade, I did reach out to my instructor about the grade following the semester’s end. She plainly spoke the advice shared above: embrace the challenge.

Collectively, the poems, illustrations, and erasures housed in Composition all embrace, explore, dissect, and interrogate language, history, and narratives in a profound and meaningful way. Early on in the book, Junious Ward provides an example of an erasure that transforms the source text into a poem in a fascinating way; the poem is “#219.” In the Notes section, Ward states the poem comes from the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 (SB 219) which, further still, is shared in its entirety via the book’s appendix. The poem is expressed in multiple forms of erasure—from the words themselves, blackout, selective focus, even Mad Lib-esque. 

Side bar: Moving the lens off the poem for a moment, from a societal standpoint, erasure also comes from “whitewashing” certain groups, primarily those of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as to make their culture more easily palatable. Ward’s poems remind us we must work to celebrate individuals and groups for the values and contributions they bring from their own distinctive communities and cultures.

In Part II of “#219,” titled The Long Game, I was struck by the repetition of the word penitentiary; in a way, this part becomes ghazal-like with its form and structure. For example:

            Be it enacted, any negro, or mixture thereof, personally registering

                        shall be punished by the penitentiary.

            For each registration properly made, the registrant

                        shall be humbled by the penitentiary.

           Marriage shall be granted to applicants of pure white race

                        only, no epithalamia sung in the penitentiary,

            save a white person. No other non-Caucasic blood

                        shall avoid running from the penitentiary.

Further still, the verbiage leading up to penitentiary is also fascinating—punished, humbled—and it continues in an evocative way throughout the section. The variation of verb choice encapsulates the variety of experience, and depending on the tone and expression of the word choice, it may indicate an illusion of actual protection. Humbled, for example, is a word of dual-meaning; in context, it explores defeating someone and their dignity, but if one is merely just reading the law, it could possibly sound like a positive thing because humble, as a noun, as an abstract concept elicits positive connotation. That’s why it is so revealing that it is illustrated as a verb here. “#219” is indicative of Composition as a whole: creative and incisive, layered and nuanced.

Junious Ward’s Composition requires a reader’s full attention; the collection does not mince words or images. To quote blurb writer Jody Chan, Ward “…resurrects personal, familial, and collective histories in striking and vivid language, each poem cinematic,” which is how I see the collection as well; it presents itself like a documentary film, and Ward’s direction is striking and powerful. An example of these shared histories comes from “Google Image Search: Boston Massacre,” which is an imagining of Crispus Attucks speaking to Colin Kaepernick. Attucks was the first American killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and Kaepernick played professional football for the San Francisco 49ers and, in 2016, used his platform as athlete to protest police brutality by kneeling during the National Anthem. Right from the beginning, Ward’s poem commands attention:

            We tiptoe the line

            of protesting and provoking,

            don’t we? Suffer a kind

            of death like a hero,

            a martyr. Takes a while

            but searching our name

            eventually shows a Black

            man wounded, bleeding,

            mulatto man with a song

            overtaking the mouth.

The call to attention comes from the power of Ward’s stand-alone line writing which explores lingering meanings. For example, “We tiptoe the line” both reflects the color line as well as the lines of law that separate those who the law is enforcing. I found the stand-alone line “don’t we? Suffer a kind” also fascinating in this context. In addition to its striking investigation of histories, this poem is a masterclass in line break and enjambment, creating powerful moments and dualing (dueling) images. It also houses another arresting question: “How could we be disrespectful/to an owner?” The duality of owner relates to slavery and alludes to the powers-that-be of San Francisco. The poem ends in powerful imagery and posits “…history will concede/our place.” As it should—with both men, Attucks and Kaepernick, being revered as heroes.

When spending time with Junious Ward’s poems, one must be willing to contend with poems and history—both elements lead the reader toward places some would rather forget or may be tired of hearing. This is especially true in an enduring piece, “The Narrative,” a stunning form poem—a villanelle—Ward opens:

            The stories tell so similar I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or

            remembering hands pinned to ground, hands penned

            writing some manacled version of the future.

            Hands behind the wheel or up, a toy gun, a licensed gun

            –daughter watching, mother watching, father, son, cousin.

            The stories be so similar I can’t tell if I’m dreaming or

            reaching for my ID, stepping out of the car, compliant, viral.

            The assassination will be Live, my brother, viva la revolución,

            igniting some Orwellian version of the future.

Considerate of the form’s framework, the repetition builds power and engages the reader in a concentrated, determined way. Written across five tercets and a closing quatrain, Ward creates a poem that focuses on fear and power as it relates to law enforcement and those hyper-subjected to law’s enforcement. The poem’s success is driven by its language, its power comes from repetition and attention to detail, and it embodies what is most successful from the collection. The collection’s success comes from its timely use of form for creative and critical attention, its powerful fusillade of language and history, and the striking use of repetition to illustrate the fusion of these elements.

As a whole, Junious Ward’s poems require attention and focus, they require the reader to embrace the challenge. I assure you, reader, if you are able to do that, then what will follow is a book of poetry that will leave you transformed. One cannot read a Junious Ward poem and not be transformed—this collection was revelatory in its expression and hard-hitting in its execution.