Village
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs
Reviewed by Sylvia Foster
In Village, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs has built a three-dimensional world in which poetry is embraced as a visual art as well as a written one. In addition to playing with form and punctuation, this collection acts as its own art exhibit, through its persona “The Artist.” The exhibit includes: a sculpture of The Artist’s Harlem, notes outlining directions for unusual memorial services, “a kind of selective glossary,” black and white photocopies of the paperwork bureaucracy tries to bury us in.
These are poems about all aspects of life, including death, memory, addiction, kinship, Dove body wash, music recommendations, and that piece of home décor you got for a steal last week. Each page is filled with wit and certainty, playfulness and sincerity, danger, and a little heartache. Some poems use line breaks and white space in such a way that it looks as if the words were tossed from the poet’s hand like dice, yet there is confidence in every. last. decision.
This collection exudes boundless imaginative energy and an unabashed independent streak, with one poem stating, “in order to disregard protecting / the identity of the people mentioned, / all names of personages & places / have not been altered.” In Village, Diggs’s imaginative funerary directions reveal a hope for a vivacious death, while personal artifacts and detailed memoryscapes show how ardently she grasps the life she has lived. In this work, The Artist is truly alive.