Black Sunday

It began as a drought. Farmers in 1930 looked up at the sky and wondered where the clouds had gone, and with them, the rain. For an area the size of three-fourths of the state of Texas, including the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, the western half of Kansas, the eastern half of Colorado, and parts of Nebraska and New Mexico, the rain wouldn’t return until 1939. At times, most of the United States was affected by the drought, but no region experienced what the southern Plains went through.The land dried up. The wind blew. Dust storms reached the East Coast. By the end of the 1930s, some 2.5 million people had migrated west to escape what came to be called the Dust Bowl. It was the agricultural counterpoint to the Great Depression, and it was part of an era when hunger became familiar to millions of Americans.Poet Benjamin Myers uses the 54 poems of “Black Sunday” to explain, interpret, and illustrate what happened in those years. You read these poems in somber stillness. You look out your window and consider what your own landscape would be with grass dead, gardens parched into sticks, the limbs of trees reaching upward like unanswered prayers.Myers uses the voices of six fictional characters to tell the Dust Bowl story in poetry. Will Burns is a farmer in the Oklahoma Panhandle who remains throughout the entire period. His wife Lily has her own perspective. Louise Burns is their daughter, speaking long after the drought has passed but remembering what it was like to be a child. Ms. Manvel is the teacher watching her class diminish one by one as families leave. The Reverend is the local Presbyterian minister, who will be tending the grave of his wife when he’s caught in a dust storm. And Henry is the town drunk. Together, these six people will tell us what happened, using their own stories and experiences.Read the hopelessness in the voice of farmer Will Burns.Will Burns on the Great American DesertA desert waste is what this place is nowand all it’s ever going to be. The landain’t ours. Blowing over itself, the sandwill take it back. The rain follows the plowmen said, but then it didn’t rain. The cow,the buffalo, Indian, and ranch handshould have it back, and can, if they can standto live here now the dirt’s begun to blow.But I ain’t got no place to go. I’ll stayand let that mean old sun burn me new shades of brown.I’ll let the blowing sand eat at my skinuntil my outside layer’s blown awayand nothing’s left but muscle and raw bone.I was a man, once. What will I be then?In another poem, Lily describes the foreclosure auction on their farm, and how the neighbors will make sure no one except Will can bid mere pennies so he can keep his land. She will also describe trying to clean the dust from her child’s eyes. Will describes “Black Sunday,” when all you could see was dirt. The final poem in the collection, the long and extraordinary “The Faith Healer,” a child is discovered with the gift of physical healing, and soon she and her family are overwhelmed by people seeking deliverance from afflictions.Myers, associate professor of literature and poetry writing at Oklahoma Baptist University, served as poet laureate of Oklahoma from 2015 to 2016. He is the author of two previous collections, “Elegy for Trains” (2011) and “Lapse Americana” (2013). “Elegy for Trains” won the Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry, and his work has been published in numerous literary journals. He received his B.A. degree from the University of the Ozarks, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in literature from Washington University in St. Louis.Memories of the Dust Bowl have receded in American history. Telling the stories of the time and region in poetry, as Myers has done in “Black Sunday,” does more than remind us of a historical period and event. These poems bring a truth to what happened in ways that history books can’t.

This year I read The Blizzard Voices, by Ted Kooser, one of our great and acclaimed American poets. That collection told the story of a sudden and overwhelming blizzard that struck middle America in the year 1888. I enjoyed it very much.In Black Sunday, Benjamin Myers does something similar with the Dust Bowl era, though I think he’s created a more resonant collection. Sharing his poems from various perspectives - a town drunk, a local preacher, a small schoolhouse teacher, and one nuclear family (father, mother, daughter) - Myers leaves glimpses that collectively inform the reader of the communal suffering endured during the tragic period.The Grapes of Wrath told what it was like for those who left Oklahoma. Black Sunday tells the story of what it was like for those who stayed. One vaguely familiar with the Dust Bowl sees a dark cloud and no shapes, and indeed, a certain feeling of bewilderment in the sufferers pervades Black Sunday.Myers, however, through the simple, lovely language of common characters, takes us deeper, and we see the woe of all creation, from insects to snakes to cows to rabbits to crows. We see dry creek beds and withered trees and barren fields and we“listen to the moaning of the landwhen windy night opens its mouth to eat.”Myers pieces together these scattered recollections to create an image of the cataclysm in its fullness. Yet, normal every day struggles and hurt are also present, mingling with the Apocalyptic.We hear the grief of the preacher, a widower, buried under dirt, carrying the loss of his wife. We find a school teacher contemplating how to best shape her lessons for success, shutting her windows to distracting storms, We observe a mother worrying over the emotional well-being of her child, and her husband burdened by economic loss and uncertain future. The town drunk reflects on his personal failing – “I was a man once.”The collection also asks moral questions about how overreaching government bureaucracy causes harm, about how soulless opportunism, and corrupt banking practices ruin lives, and while the notion of God's wrath is present, one character humbly considers humanity might be to blame- “maybe we’re like hoppers in a plague who eat the world to brown bones and move on.”The readers can taste and feel the dirt in every crevice, the teetering resolve in every glance, and the sturdy resilience in the confessions of these hardy and earnest folk.Black Sunday contains moving and beautiful language, but more; it tells a story we all need to hear.

With vivid, stark imagery, the harsh realities of the Dust Bowl years are brought to life in this collection of sonnets. Not just for those who enjoy poetry but also a good story, the poet weaves his words in such a way that the reader is transported to the 1930’s and can almost taste the dust. Beautifully written, I am left with both a sense of admiration for those who endured through those terrible times and a sense of hope. This is a collection I will return to again and again.

Benjamin Myers is a poet who uses form masterfully. However, the two most outstanding aspects of Black Sunday, in my opinion, are voice and narrative. These poems are startling and heartbreaking in their imagery and honesty. This collection should be used in all Oklahoma schools.

I loved this book. Wonderfully touching poems—sonnets no less—that document the dust in ways that are just as biblical as they are historical.