In Inheritance of Drowning: Poems
By Dorsía Smith Silva
CavanKerry Press | 2024 | 104 pages
As I write this in October 2024, U.S. news coverage is dominated by Hurricane Milton spiraling towards Florida. Meanwhile, Puerto Rico is still recovering from the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and María, which ravaged the island in 2017. Thousands of people were killed, and Puerto Rico experienced a blackout that lasted more than seven months. Dorsía Smith Silva’s urgent yet timeless debut poetry collection, In Inheritance of Drowning, is a powerful exploration of Hurricane María’s lasting impact on Puerto Rico. Her riveting collection examines the “Everyday Drownings” of marginalized people, racial injustice, and how the history of colonization continues to invade the present. By writing this important, layered collection of poetry that moves and transforms with gripping force, she reminds us of the power of resilience and what could be possible with social change.
Dorsía Smith Silva is an accomplished poet, an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the poetry editor at The Hopper. She is also a full professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, with a Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature and Language. Smith Silva asks big questions and draws surprising connections, while steeping the exquisite imagery of her poems in history and memorable metaphors. Like a hurricane, the shape of the collection begins with quiet anticipation before total immersion in the murky and violent depths of the storm and its aftermath.
Smith Silva describes her experiences before, during, and after Hurricane María in the first part of the book. In her opening poem, “What the Poet Is Supposed to Write About a Hurricane,” she writes:
What the poet is supposed to write about a hurricane
should be skylights of horror,
not skip rocks of beauty in walls of wind,
affixed to the puzzle pieces of the vortex eye,
spinning like a lost continent’s soul.
She pulls us into the collection with the heavy awareness that she is bearing witness to and interpreting the complexities of the devastation that, later in the book, includes examining generational and colonial trauma. From the middle of “Return”:
Then they arrived with hanging scowls. Arrived on horses
long-reined with whips. Ran down our Black bodies.
Trampled our faces. Maimed our voices. Made us turn our
backs to water. Told us, Water will not protect you here. This
water does not belong to you. Your tears belong to you. That
water is yours. That water should be plenty.
Smith Silva shows us the brutality of Hurricane María’s rain and wind in “The Awakening of Hurricane María”:
At first, the rain comes in whispers:
thin slants on the windows, then it scrawls
across the glass like long graffiti,
reaching out to stretch mark the gutters
and dwarf the downspouts. The birds vanish
The poem continues to demonstrate the escalating violence of the storm, “decapitating the hibiscus,” and the overwhelming fear that persists.
The hurricane interrupted, threatened, and had the potential to destroy nearly every aspect of life. In her poetry, we witness the fear that existed in every detail of preparation and the struggle for survival in its aftermath. But even so, Smith Silva illuminated moments of resilience.
One of the poems that resonated most for me was “My Grandmother’s Photo,” an intimate portrait of the poet’s grandmother, which has been destroyed by the hurricane.
With just one day, the rain washes
out my grandmother’s body
and makes her a false whisper upon inspection.
Brown dots replace her smile
and her hands are swallowed
by dark spirals and bubbles.
The thin edges fall into wrinkled tatters,
sprinkles of paper breaking faster
from sheets of water. The wind pushes
her, cracked and rearranged beside an
overturned car like a new broken
flower in the grave.
This valuable relic of the past is ruined in the storm, but Smith Silva brings it back to life and preserves it by writing down what she has observed and interpreted. This begins what is a nuanced shift towards the next section which examines, through striking imagery, lyricism, and metaphor, the historical exploitation and discrimination of Black and Caribbean people.
“Drowning in 5 Parts” is a compelling piece that begins, “We have always been drowning—” and dramatizes the tense colonial relationship between the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The relationship and exploration of this piece is layered. It deepens when Smith Silva brings us back to the imagery of water and navigates the complexities of her relationship with water, examining the intricate entanglement of love, fear, and respect.
The title poem, “In Inheritance of Drowning” confronts the brutality of colonialism as forced on indigenous people. It boldly takes the reader through the lasting impact of historic violence against language, culture, land, and body. This pivotal piece of the collection also takes on slavery and displacement, and asks, “How many ways can we drown?”
They arrived. They arrived on boats. They arrived. Well-lit our
Cacique Agüeybaná. Punctuated our Arawak ways. Walloped our
waters. Punched down our language. Until our words got washed.
Until our tongues got tired. Until our tracheas got thick. Until
we forgot that Columbus was a sore winner and loser. Gold for our
drowning. We ran after the holler.
Building on the colonial and generational trauma, the action and settings of the remaining poems bear witness to present day racial injustices. Fear encompasses the past, present, and the threat of future hurricanes. This spiral of stunning poetry is the poet’s call to action. By examining history and its haunting presence, and by observing the connections to the natural world, one might ask: How can we stop the drowning?
As we brace ourselves for the next hurricane, while millions of people are still recovering from Hurricane María, I wonder: What will it take for social, racial, and climate justice to become the top priority? Maybe poetry will be the beacon we have been waiting for, starting with Smith Silva’s debut collection, In Inheritance of Drowning.
Header photo courtesy Pixabay.