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A review by richardleis
Bastards of the Reagan Era by Reginald Dwayne Betts
5.0
Reginald Dwayne Betts reminds readers of Bastards of the Reagan Era that the era it describes has not ended yet, and won't until we read and reread these poems on our way to doing something, anything that breaks this cycle of oppression, suffering, and loss. His experience is not my experience but these poems bring me back to the 1980s and those experiences that were all around me no matter how far I retreated into my shell that I have taken too many decades to start dismantling so that I can reckon with what's wrong with this nation.
Many of these poems end with observations that take my breath away, sometimes not pleasantly. The image of boys "controlled by the spinning sneaker / strings of the dead boys above them" in Elegy With a RIP Shirt Turning Into the Wind" on page 37 is concrete and haunting. "Where pretty has failed everyone, even / cherubim, out to leave us to this world" in "For the City That Nearly Broke Me" on page 39 resonates as criticism of an abstraction that continues to hold too much power over us. By "The Invention of Crack" on page 50, Betts' poems had prepared me to trust the language and the jargon, history, and critique that lists and repeats and makes personal the politics of oppression and the purgatories and hells that arise and are maintained by it.
Betts uses vivid sensory detail in his poems about prison experience that left me overwhelmed; I'm not going to say I know what it's like, but this brush with prison life/purgatory/hell through these poems leaves me dejected but angry and wanting to learn more.
As public displays of hate destroy naive and purposely ignorant blinders many of us have had on forever, I've begun to recognize that a reckoning with white supremacy and the history of the United States is long, long overdue. The persona narrator in these poems is not necessarily or only angry. Betts' poems open readers' eyes to places and experiences they might otherwise shrink away from, and they do this with sadness and elegy that should motivate us to make this world so much better than we have made it so far, before we condemn more generations to this cycle of betrayal, suffering, and revelation that has not ended yet.
Many of these poems end with observations that take my breath away, sometimes not pleasantly. The image of boys "controlled by the spinning sneaker / strings of the dead boys above them" in Elegy With a RIP Shirt Turning Into the Wind" on page 37 is concrete and haunting. "Where pretty has failed everyone, even / cherubim, out to leave us to this world" in "For the City That Nearly Broke Me" on page 39 resonates as criticism of an abstraction that continues to hold too much power over us. By "The Invention of Crack" on page 50, Betts' poems had prepared me to trust the language and the jargon, history, and critique that lists and repeats and makes personal the politics of oppression and the purgatories and hells that arise and are maintained by it.
Betts uses vivid sensory detail in his poems about prison experience that left me overwhelmed; I'm not going to say I know what it's like, but this brush with prison life/purgatory/hell through these poems leaves me dejected but angry and wanting to learn more.
As public displays of hate destroy naive and purposely ignorant blinders many of us have had on forever, I've begun to recognize that a reckoning with white supremacy and the history of the United States is long, long overdue. The persona narrator in these poems is not necessarily or only angry. Betts' poems open readers' eyes to places and experiences they might otherwise shrink away from, and they do this with sadness and elegy that should motivate us to make this world so much better than we have made it so far, before we condemn more generations to this cycle of betrayal, suffering, and revelation that has not ended yet.