Review | RUNAWAY: THE DARING ESCAPE OF ONA JUDGE by Ray Anthony Shepard
I remember the first time I heard Ray Anthony Shepard read aloud his draft of what became his picture book, Runaway. He was an attendee at a Highlights Foundation workshop, at which Kathy Erskine, Alma Fullerton and I were faculty. We’d only spent a brief amount of time together, but I was impressed by the depth of his wisdom and the breadth of his experience.
As soon as he read his draft aloud, I was impressed by the power and lyricism of his poetry. And by his genius in using rhetorical questions as the poetic structural framework for the story of Ona Judge, a woman who was enslaved by the Washingtons, and undertook a daring escape to leave the president’s household and emancipate herself. Even now, I can hear Ray’s voice in my head, repeating the refrain: Why you run Ona Judge?
I had absolutely no doubt the poem would soon be housed in a book. And sure enough, before the workshop ended, the phenomenal editor, Grace Kendall of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, had, I believe, expressed her interest in adding this work to her list.
Earlier this year, Ray sent me a copy of the picture book that had been created out of his poem. As I turned the pages, I felt, again, the eloquent strength of Ray’s words.
When I asked if he would write a post for our initiative, of which he is a member, he instead sent me another poem, which is presented below. I hope every reader of this post will take time, not only to read this poem, but also his earlier work, Now or Never! 54th Massachusetts Infantry’s War to End Slavery, which was named a Carter G. Woodson Award Honor Book for the Secondary Level category.
Ray is a former middle school teacher and retired editor-in-chief of a major educational publishing company. Runaway is his first - but I’m sure not last - picture book. I, for one, cannot wait to read this authors’ future poetry.
Diverse Verse
by
Ray Anthony Shepard
Verse and nonfiction, a midnight writer’s vison
of diversity when he’s in his cups, the hour’s late,
and bed a sorceress’s casket call.
At the desk, before the new day arrives and evaporates
his poetic fancy that may have more to do
with the Angels Envy that sloshes neat in the cup
and blinds his critical eye from seeing this flight of fancy
as a mash-up gone astray.
Best to stay on task and sip the heady brew
and find words that take a reader on a magic carpet ride
above the mountain top where they can feel the thunder
of Harriet and Frederick, Malcolm and Martin
stomp the ground in lines and stanzas long and short
that zig
and zag
across the page
to quicken the reader’s heart to a faster pace
than the dry lines of schoolbook facts
that run from left to right to the page’s edge
without a trace of emotion but simply out of space
as if they reached a ledge and must for safety’s sake
retreat to another line, rather than tweak the reader
with an artful enjambment that requires more thought
than an open or closed em dash.
There is a joy, beyond the early morning cups,
for the pre-dawn writer when he has harnessed images
and sounds that serve a bite of history
like a slice of a Paul Robeson tomato on a large white plate
— a verse of factual storytelling —
sweetened for the reader’s young palate
that pulls her into the scene where she coughs on the rich aroma
from Harriet’s corncob pipe that autumn afternoon
when a sun speckled serpent slithered out of the rocks
and warned Mosses not to be John Brown’s general.
