Yard Show

Starred review from October 21, 2024
The erudite latest from Harrington (Primitive) celebrates the yard show—a personalized, and personally significant, display of objects in one’s yard—as a microcosm for Black American expressions of place and belonging. Harrington’s poems draw on a variety of sources—from roadside signs to the words of Martin Luther King Jr.—to create a delightful poetic mélange that showcases the ingenuity of Black Americans making space for themselves. The long title poem catalogs a specific yard show, moving fluidly between the voice of the speaker and a woman whose yard reflects her efforts to define her environment, incorporating “a red-capped gnome,” “two ponds, three fountains,” a hand-painted plastic cherub, and “a cast-iron kettle pinked with sedum,” among other treasures. Harrington captures the (at times) mundane and oppressive Midwest: “I am heading to Springfield,/ through flatscapes, past variegated greens,/ the Second Amendment Burma-shaved on fence posts/ SHOOTING SPORTS/ ARE SAFE AND FUN/ THERE’S NO NEED/ TO FEAR A GUN/ while a voice on the radio predicts farm futures.” Yet possibility remains in “ woman’s backyard and garden.// What she’s made, with coins of sweat and constant work.” This generous volume is a memorable testament to Black creativity.