A mother gleams in happiness as her child babbles "ma-ma" for the first time. A father prides in his child when he finally learns how to ride a bicycle, after falling and grazing his knees, blood still oozing from the wounds. Two parents begin to experience a midlife crisis as their son’s shadow vanishes through the gates of college.
These images are perhaps traditional ideals of "tenderness": a feeling of deep affection toward others, regardless of distance, which connects us all as humans. Derrick Austin certainly explores these concepts in Tenderness, his most recent poetry collection. For those who may not be familiar with Austin, he was born and raised in Florida, has written various books (Trouble the Water, Chapbook) and leads creative writing workshops at universities across the country.
As a poetry collection about tenderness, there is an unsurprising multitude of poems that address the nature of love. One piece that stood out to me was Epithalamium, which describes a wedding in Florida. This is clearly an homage to the Sunshine State he loves, and in the story, the couple “cast [their] names into the boundless Gulf.” The poem is not only a love letter to Florida, but also to love itself: their romance is forever embedded in the waters, and by being a part of the grandeur of nature, it will stand the test of time. This theme of love being ‘eternal’ and cemented in nature is Austin’s way of elucidating tenderness as an enduring force.
Yet another heartwarming poem was Son Jarocho, a prose-like narrative that recounts the narrator's adventures with his friends in Mexico which takes up nearly a dozen pages. The language is lively and raw, fully depicting the intimacy and the companionship of the friends, while characters ruminate on their identities. Ultimately, the collective journey taken together by friends is an affectionate story that preaches to readers to fully celebrate, appreciate, and live in the moments of our lives. If traveling on a cross-country road trip is on your bucket list, reading this poem will easily give you a glimpse of the excitement and vigor of this journey.
However, to say that Tenderness only explores love is a gross mischaracterization of the poetry collection. In fact, what stands out is perhaps the lack of 'tenderness' in these poems, as Austin tackles many somber societal issues. Specifically, a plethora of his poems seek to understand "the Black experience" and what it means to be Black in yesterday's and today's America.
These poems naturally enter dark but unchartered territories: Compared to other Black authors who may write lengths detailing the distressing lives of characters, Austin rarely tackles these issues in the foreground of his poems, even when he makes allusions to historical and present events. In Late Summer, he establishes the context of the savage murder of Philando Castile in front of his wife’s and daughter’s eyes by a cop in 2016. Yet, this does not become the focus of the poem. Instead, he transitions to narrating a summer fling, reminiscing on unrequited love. The only thin thread connecting these ideas is the grief felt by the speaker during this doomed relationship and the larger community that expressed outrage over police brutality. Austin’s poetic structure seems to imply that these problems permeate society, but they may only be in the background of our minds. His messaging is timely, with the ever increasing use of social media as a tool for awareness. We have the power to have our voices heard, but to what extent do we care about such important issues? Does reposting a black screen or engaging with trendy hashtags suffice? Are we truly tender and affectionate toward others when we see a life lost? What does it mean to be tender?
These pernicious effects then shift to the core of these poems, suggesting the universality of pain among marginalized communities. In reference to the past, he speaks of the brutal and savage nature of American history. A substantially heartbreaking poem is The Witching Hour, where he personalizes trees not only as physical beings of nature but trees that have seen (and taken) the lives of Black and Brown people. In this case then, it appears violent death is an inevitable aspect of nature, a direct juxtaposition to what was described earlier regarding love in nature. Yet another memorable poem is My Education, which is structured in a circular manner so that it can be read in chronological and reverse order. The poem accentuates the speaker's desire to be white and comments on the segregation of education. More than fifty years after Brown v. Board, this segregation is still pervasive, causing the speaker (and Black students) to lose their childlike curiosity and innocence. These sociological, historical, and institutional issues then bind space and time together and plague humanity, and it seems Austin is imploring us to address them more than ever today.
So after all, why does Austin name his collection "Tenderness" if so many of his poems are antithetical to that idea, exploring apathy and hate instead? To me, Austin is redefining our understanding of tenderness, where love cannot possibly exist without hate. There is a fraught and fragile relationship between these two opposing forces, and perhaps this precarious balance is what tenderness is. Hate seems to be hurled at anyone in America whose skin is not white and whose sexuality is not heterosexual. At the same time, humans have the capacity to choose who and what they love. We can be unconsciously primed to abhor something that is unlike us, but we can also choose to consciously embrace people who are different from us. This power of love is vital and after introspection, we will find that the bonds from our similarities that hold us are much stronger than those from our differences that pull us away.
With this in mind, I think Derrick Austin’s Tenderness is definitely worth checking out. There are many other interesting and fun poems that I would describe as “hip,” with references to Drake, Jackie Kennedy, Emily Bronte, and Romanticism. Tenderness is a light and enjoyable read for those just starting out on poetry, but it is still thought-provoking: beneath the surface of these poems, there are tacit subjects that should disturb and appall us. If the goal of literature is to raise awareness of our collective surroundings, then Austin has done more than enough to warrant a read for Tenderness.
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