Hello friends,
One of my dear mentors, the brilliant and inspiring Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, has recently released her second full-length book of poems. Like her first poetry collection, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems, which I reviewed here, this new collection aptly entitled The Peace Chronicles is another magnificent work. I was so honored to read it and I was again so deeply touched by her poems. They are stunning in their rawness, honest, humility, and beauty (both pain and joy). If you are interested in purchasing of copy of Dr. Sealey-Ruiz’s book The Peace Chronicles, you can do so here on Amazon.com or directly through her publisher here. Below I put together a few thoughts about the book. I wrote more than a typical book “review,” but it moved me so much that the words flowed out of me as I reflected on her poems.
A Review of The Peace Chronicles
Pain. Happiness. Struggle. Love. Peace. How do we explain such infinitely complex and timeless concepts? We feel these emotions; we struggle with them; we get lost in them. We endlessly search for some, and tirelessly try to escape others. In Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz’s second full-length collection of poems, The Peace Chronicles, Sealey-Ruiz again takes the reader on an unfiltered journey through the depths of her heart as she strives to transcend the pain of a past relationship.
The book begins following the conclusion of her first poetry collection, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems, as Sealey-Ruiz documents in rich, raw, intimate detail about how her love, Tyrone, betrayed her. Her words cut sharply right from the book’s first pages. As she writes in the prologue: “Free from lies / free from loyalty to uncommitment / vacillating temperaments / disappearing acts of love / that hold tight to empty promises.” In the pages to follow, Sealey-Ruiz transcribes in vivid detail the hurt that Tyrone caused her: “I task my heart with discovering how to remove the pain you’ve caused— / How to leave behind your mark undone.” Like her triumph in Love from the Vortex & Other Poems, Sealey-Ruiz again opens up her heart like a vessel, where the reader does not just peer into it from a distance or from behind the looking-glass, but is placed right beside her, as if the searing emotions in which she is sharing on the page are your emotions as well. To be able to feel the depths of such emotion speaks to the beauty of her soul. But, then, somehow, to so magnificently capture those emotions through writing is magical, even ethereal. To possess the courage to find the words to describe this hurt—here, for much of the book, in her betrayal by her once-partner Tyrone—is prodigious. The vividness of the pain that I felt by Tyrone’s betrayal, just by reading, was stunning.
As Sealey-Ruiz continues to expound over the betrayal of Tyrone and her internal pilgrimage to overcome it, she sprinkles in powerful poems that grapple with her complicated relationship with her late father, about being a powerful Black woman in a society that remains saturated by racism, and about the boundless joys of motherhood. These poems further reveal her entire essence, and provide a fuller portrait of the mechanisms in which she is able to search for peace—for peace cannot be achieved, and one’s pain cannot be transcended, until one’s self is fully understood. Each of these sources of identity—her Blackness, her identity as a daughter or mother, and, yes, her past relationship with Tyrone—each make up the many layers of this essence. While some of these identities may seem unique to her set of experiences, and many certainly are, if we search honestly within ourselves, we realize that the search for identity is universal. Sealey-Ruiz provides us all a guidepost of how to search within ourselves, because, again, in order to find peace, we must find who we truly are—we must know all the interlocking puzzle pieces of our mind, body, heart, and soul.
And, that is what is so beautiful about Sealey-Ruiz’s poems: we can have such drastically different life experiences, but yet be able to relate so intimately and effortlessly to the words on the page. There is a ubiquity to her words that remains so striking: we all feel pain, we all want joy, we all strive to love and be loved. Because, while her poems might be about Tyrone, they are not actually about Tyrone: they are about her, and her struggle to find peace within (or perhaps beyond) that relationship, to find peace within the world, and, most of all, to find peace within herself. The Peace Chronicles is not a book of poetry about peace, but about finding peace. It is this subtlety that is so ground-breaking and so powerful to read, for Sealey-Ruiz’s candor, rawness, and humility shines on each page. As she writes in “Life and Death” in the chapter aptly titled “Peacemaking:” “I sit and watch the sad as it passes. I say goodbye to the loneliness / & in my strength I return to self love. I comfort myself. Just as I have done before. Just as I always will.” Sealey-Ruiz’s magnificent ability to take us on this journey from the abyss of betrayal into an equilibrium of peace is, quite simply, an astonishing lyrical feat: each poem moving, each stanza purposeful, each word so precisely placed. There is a beautiful rhyme and verse to each and every poem. As I quickly turned from page to page, I could not help but to periodically take a deep breath to marvel at this collection—and marvel in the range of emotions that it brought out in me and made me feel. I was both paralyzed and enchanted at different moments by the words on these pages, reading the book in one sitting from start to finish.
By the end of the book, Sealey-Ruiz takes the scars of her past, and instead of hiding them or seeing them as blemishes, embraces them in her journey to find the peace that seemed out of her grasp at the beginning of the book. “Steady healing, already willing— / My heart has learned what it looks / like, feels like, to do the work / of forgiveness so that it can be open / to love again.”
In my own life, I often wonder if I will able to be to find true peace, personally, professionally, and beyond. Perhaps I am not alone in feeling this way. But what this new journey that Sealey-Ruiz takes us on helped me further realize, is that to truly find peace requires honest, raw introspection. We cannot shield or hide from our deepest pain or our deepest fears—about life, about love, about loneliness—but, instead, confront them, because, on the other side of these inner battles is the potential to experience the highest joys. Ultimately, being able to experience these waves of feelings—personal sojourns even—are what make us human. Sealey-Ruiz realizes that our most intimate hurt and our most euphoric bliss is not mutually exclusive; these feelings are interwoven into the fabric of our lives and the fabric of our souls. Sometimes, in the complexity of life, one may lead to the other. As Sealey-Ruiz demonstrates by lived example in this book, when we allow ourselves to grapple with our despair, this reflection paves way for healing and, yes, perhaps authentic peace, even if imperfectly in this imperfect world. The Peace Chronicles is a work of brilliant lyrical melodies page after page—a stunning mosaic of a person’s quest for peace—and, like her first collection, is another work of monumental courage and bravery. It is fitting that in the final poem of the book, entitled “Where I’m From,” Sealey-Ruiz announces herself, reinvented after her journey, and reborn once again with vigor, boldness, and hope.
May we all be so fortunate to learn from her many examples in this book, and through her existence, of how to live fully, love forever, and find our own inner peace.
