Voodoo hypothesis by Canisia Lubrin Buckrider Books, 2017 Unraveling Time, Space, and Human Existence: A Review of Voodoo hypothesis by Canisia Lubrin Each poem in Canisia Lubrin’s Voodoo hypothesis (Buckrider Books, 2017) is an epic dealing with existence, spirituality, human tolerance, science, and exploration. Reading each poem is like entering a new-world setting, one that is related to those worlds that have come before but that takes steps into a future predicated on history and what people have or have not learned from it. The meshing of religion with science is crucial as indicated by the title and borne out in each poem that alludes to the past while posing a challenge to imagine a future of human existence that perhaps may not destroy itself. Presented in five sections divided by topographical line drawings, the poems present colonial horrors with a skilled use of imagery and a measured use of language. Some sections open with a quotation that sets the tone for the assemblage of verse to come. Each poem, through the strong voice of history, explores human existence on earth and what it means. Stanzas are controlled spaces that reveal even as they remain mysterious. Lines are broken skillfully as beacons of significance. In “Children of the Archipelago,” a mix of African/Caribbean/French/English influences illuminates the idea of a mongrel culture that resists the colonizers definitions and claims “A place on stolen land to lay our heads as our parents/ pray our bad chance away.” Images of hurricanes, banana fields, galvanized rooftops, and “our seabed trail of islands” add a sense of place amid “unbrittle homes ransacked/ in cannibal froths of sea.” Lubrin deftly alludes to history, geography, and belief throughout this and other poems in the collection. The opening poem that shares the title of the collection gives a sense of genesis in space where “we imagine/ that while they go out in search/ of God/ we stay in and become god.” The Curiosity rover on Mars is introduced quickly thereafter and at once religion, humanity, and the universe seem to become one. In the second stanza, the speaker addresses Curiosity and asks, “Did you not land with your rocket behind/ you, hope beyond hope on the tip of your rope/ with the kindness of antigravity slowing you down,/ you, before me, metal and earthen.” The introduction of the “me” lends to some confusion, and perhaps it is Mars responding, adding to the mystery that permeates the collection as a whole. The language of the sciences—astronomy, cosmology, physics—appears in nearly every poem, coupled with historical and spiritual references, and provides a huge stage for humanity to play out to an end or to another beginning, punctuated with past sorrows and hidden agendas. The careful use of language is an important quality in this collection. The interlacing of cultural allusions combined with an interweaving of lingual differences that rise as a result of historical and colonial events animates the sentient voices within each poem. These voices not only represent lingual references; they underscore the importance of geography as history. In “Unofficial Biography of the Sea” the speaker talks of mountains and “islands rocking gently/ at the bottom of the Atlantic –” and refers to “the children sprayed/ unto New World” in an imagery-rich poem that mingles belief, geography, and the sea in lines describing “virulent times, our settling/ ligatured to the boogaloo/ to splintered crucifix, fish pot the canoe.” Abundant figurative language such as this permeates the collection and, although requiring multiple readings and some research, is what makes reading Lubrin’s poems such a worthwhile experience. Canisia Lubrin’s Voodoo hypothesis is a stunning collection that retells and reveals the terrible truths about colonialism and institutional racism. The poems serve as reminders and warnings, predictions of what future colonies might endure as far away as Mars or Saturn. The question posed in the first poem, “But why/ should I unravel over all this remembering?” is answered in every poem that follows. Human cruelty and intolerance, its narrow vision of fairness and equality, will carry to future lands the shocks of the past in the name of progress and destiny, and in the final poem, the speaker explains, “Today I insist on the tenderness/ I may soon forget” to vow a connection to the back-story of “lives written in chalk” proclaiming “You will remember,/ the boreal plane,” this circling back to the beginning where “we move too quick for understanding.” Individually and together, the poems in this collection rage against historical horrors committed on so many and herald a brilliant existence that is “indistinguishable from magic.” The unraveling of memory is all worth it. Visit Buckrider Books' Website

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