Cardinal
Tyree Daye
Reviewed by E. Thomas Jones
Cardinal, Tyree Daye’s second full-length poetry collection, pays homage to inheritance while simultaneously searching for a place to belong. However, because the speaker of these poems is a black American, his journey from his rural hometown to the city is complicated by historical violence and ancestral traumas. In “Carry Me,” Daye writes: “…I’m filled with people, / someone has taught me to fly. / Whichever way I flew, my inheritance couldn’t be lifted / from northeastern North Carolina’s wet clay, / its hands hardened around my weighted ankles.”
Many poems in this collection are personal and intimate. Reading them transports you to a small, North Carolina town, lets you peer through the windows of a family home, and stops beside you on the road to give directions. Others compound historical and literary references, as in “Field Notes on Leaving.” In the collection’s opening poem, Daye draws a distinction between himself and the white poets before him, reminding: “I can’t afford to think like Whitman / that whomever I shall meet on the road I shall love / and whoever beholds me shall love me.” Daye skillfully weaves together both the personal and historical, presenting an experience of living as a black person in America that is both singular and universal.
The collection is more than poetry—it also functions as a guide for its audience, providing markers throughout the text. Some markers are repeated, vital words: stars, ocean, grandmother, field, sky, cardinal. Others are recreations of constellations with historical significance, such as the Big Dipper. Others still appear as photographs. In “The Shape of God,” Daye provides a clue as to how they function: “I made you a cardinal // because there’s so many in this town, / and I’m tired of asking your photos to speak / the moment they were in.”
Cardinal’s speaker, identified as Tyree in the final poem, “Field Notes of Beginning,” is always looking up. In a landscape that attempts to root or even bury him, the sky symbolizes freedom, safety, and a map that cannot be followed. Daye leaves us with these parting stanzas: “I said my few-note goodbyes my dead will not come / I will not see a cardinal in the city // so I drew one on my chest / A coop inside a coop inside of me.” The words are bittersweet; the speaker leaves, but his past remains enclosed within him. Still, the book’s world opens up in these final lines, visualizing something beyond the heavy inheritance the speaker carries.