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BOOK REVIEWSare trying to understand the meaning ofthe storm’s devastation. Recently, Prospect1, the largest biennial of international contemporaryart in the United States, wasinaugurated in New Orleans, where manyof the participating artists tried, in galleries,museums, and streets, to work out theirunderstanding of a city ruined by waterand corruption.Interestingly, instead of writing poems inreaction to Hurricane Katrina, Ballardwrites his poems in and around NewOrleans, which was and remains the literalcontainer for the tragedies of the flood.Ballard’s positioning of the poems beforeand after Katrina, between time, as hewrites (and the old Cajuns say), allows himto grapple with a more subtle range of experience;whereas a polemic of the disasterwould only circumscribe his work by outrage.On the contrary, Ballard’s poemsexplore death, friendship, history, intoxication,lineage, as well as varying styles ofpoetry. His writing can be sharp as a tack,purposefully opaque or dissonant, andsometimes thoroughly hermetic. This willingnessto risk the reader makes readingBallard’s work refreshingly challenging.Humans and poetry are more complicatedthan themes and meaning or natural disastersand shock doctrines. Parish Krewes isan unofficial selected poems of MicahBallard, many of which were not only publishedin various small press ‘zines but alsoin several beautifully crafted small books.The thread of Hurricane Katrina does notrun through the entire collection, whichmay or may not be a fault. It may simplybe a fault of the reader not digging deepenough. For example, the strongest poemin Parish Krewes is “9/13/96,” the date thatAmerican rapper Tupac Shakur died ofrespiratory failure and cardiac arrestcaused by four gunshot wounds sustainedin a still- unsolved drive-by shooting inLas Vegas. The poem identifies the tattooson Shakur’s body.9/13/96Nerfertiti overright pec & serpentwith jaws openon left shoulder.German crosswith Exodus 18:11across the back, Playazon nape of neck.Christ in crownof thorns & flameson left bicepsHeartless with skull& crossbones on right.50 Niggaz over sternumFTW in scriptacross the shoulderblades & trapezoids.Laugh Now with maskof Comedy on lowersides of back, CryLater with maskof Tragedy. Outlawdown left forearmThug Life with bulletacross abs.On the surface this poem has nothing to dowith Hurricane Katrina. Yet as one contemplatesthe imagery and its canvas, one cannothelp but contemplate how the bodies ofblack men have been the site of the enforcementof power, the slash of the whip, simultaneouslythreatening and eroticallycharged, for four centuries in the newworld, often quite pronounced in Louisiana,culminating in the unsettling images ofblack men left to die on rooftops in thesurge of Katrina’s flood. Check the historyof Congo Square in New Orleans whereAfrican polyrhythm gave birth to Americanpopular music yet was also a place of fierceauthority finally obliterated by 1960s urbanrenewal; check Angola State Prison, createdas a way to continue plantation labor inthe wake of Reconstruction; check JamesBooker, genius piano player whose tragiclife, haunted by drug addiction and jailtime, was manipulated by Harry Connick,Sr., New Orleans district attorney, to teachhis now famous son, a pale imitator of themaster; check Kanye West saying PresidentBush doesn’t care about black people.The personal is the political. We havefamily, friends, and colleagues trying torebuild their homes in New Orleans. Thepace of recovery clearly illustrates the lackof concern by all of us, especially ourleaders. It is a crying shame that the citythat gave America music is crippled.There are three small, untitled poems inParish Krewes that are my favorites. Each isa list: neighborhoods, carnival krewes,and potions. As a young poet growing upin New Orleans, I was always fascinatedby names—for example, how street namesin the city could make a poem. Ballard’spoem that lists New Orleans neighbor-26 february/march 2009