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The Weeping Time: Elegy in Three Voices

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Christopher Conlon is a master of historic narrative poetry, his books as immediate and thrilling as any novel. His previous book, "Gilbert and Garbo in Love," was a brilliant reimagining of the parallel lives of the great silent screen lovers; his new one, "The Weeping Time," expands on that achievement, bringing into breathtaking focus not only the lives of his characters, but also the whole blighted story of slavery in the antebellum South. Taking as his starting point a tragic historical event--the largest slave auction in American history, on March 2, 1859--Conlon presents the story leading up to that event, through the eyes of three characters: Pierce Butler, owner of the slaves; Fanny Kemble, his abolitionist, English actress wife; and Jack, an amalgam of the hundreds of slaves led to suffering and ruin through Butler's cruelty and profligacy. Conlon alternates points of view between the three characters, bringing them all to memorable life through sharp writing and acute psychological insight. Even Butler comes across as sympathetic to a degree, but readers are most likely to remember Jack's story of pure suffering, as in "Learning the Language":
As a boy Jack would use many words,
and sometimes they earned him
a harsh rebuke in return, a slap across
the face, the lash itself over his back
and shoulders, and so he learned to speak,
to remove the bad and stupid language
like why and stop and wrong
and replace it with just one word, a word
that was always the right word,
and so to the Major he says Yes,
and to the Missis he says Yes,
and to their children he says Yes,
and to the overseer he says Yes,
and to every white person he sees
on God's Earth he says Yes, and it's
a beautiful and harmonious world
of Yes which he says again and again,
even in his sleep, to smother the No
that always lurks at the base
of his spine, hot, acidic, ready to spring.

The Weeping Time: Elegy In Three Voices is a compendium of verse by Christopher Conlon that taken in sequence and as a whole comprising a kind of novel whose poetic narratives reveal real-life characters against a background of real events. The Weeping Time is unique and enthusiastic reading commended to the attention of those who appreciate innovative and superbly crafted storytelling verse. Blood: Cutting himself while shaving/one morning. Pierce dabs at the spot/with his fingertips, lifts it to his lips,/sucks at it gently: swallowing the salty/copper taste, he wonders about/nigger blood: imagines it filled/with the odor of woodsmoke/and the taste of game, wild, slightly/bitter, overripe, and succulent.

The Weeping Time: Elegy in Three Voices by Christopher Conlon is a novel in verse, based on the true story of the largest sale of human beings in the history in the United States. Conlon is a master of free-form verse, and uses it to distill the essence of this heinous event, and build the lives of the main players, to devastating and inspiring effect. Amazingly, what comes through again and again is the ability of humans in the most abject and dire circumstances to experience the bright side of humanity -- joy, pleasure, love, devotion... amidst the Hell that is their lot in life.
Conlon is an author who can do no wrong. I'm in awe his prose and his free-verse. No one has engaged my intellect and emotions in quite the way that he has. Christopher Conlon is a treasure, and you will continue to hear that from folks with far greater literary credentials than I possess.