Reviewed by Truth Thomas
Lamont B. Steptoe has survived the war in Viet Nam. He has survived being a black man in America, and he has survived the poisonous legacy of slavery that continues to affect every descendant of that holocaust. His survival has come at a cost. Indeed, every minefield of emotional trauma he has experienced has left its scars. In his latest collection, Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking, Steptoe makes the reader aware of them. This expansive volume of poetry is a journal of his ongoing trials in the wake of PTRS (Post Traumatic Racism Syndrome). In the pages of this book, Steptoe reaches out to celebrate his survival with all those who are enduring that affliction—particularly all his ancestors—those people of color who have irrigated the earth with their blood. Consider the poem “Like Worms After Rain:”
All over the world
Brown and Black burrowing deep into the earth
Sometimes to survive
Sometimes to mind gold diamonds uranium oil from
the guts of the planet
Snatching fortunes for the pale ones
Who reward them with sacks of emptiness like roped
ducks for Chinese fishermen
What the pale ones don’t know is the conversations
whispered like prayers to the dark
It is not men or women that emerge like worms after a
rain but warriors
Lips moist with thunderclaps beckoning the future with
fingers of light (23)
“Like Worms After Rain,” like many pieces in Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking is introspective in tone, and armed with piercing, “fingers of light” like, metaphors. Much in keeping with the plot of this poem itself, Steptoe has burrowed deep into the earth of prosody to surface with a lyricism that wastes no words. He has emerged from an earth of genocide to forge an aesthetic that is equal parts protest, and equal parts resistance. However, his new collection is not a “conversation whispered.” Rather, Steptoe’s latest work reads more like prayers of defiance uttered in the light of day. Take these lines from the piece “Oppressed, We are One:”
Black Diaspora
Slain and mocked
In the marketplace
We will erupt volcanoes
When this flesh falls
Away
Diamonds
will stand in our shape (310)
What is also impressive in Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking is Steptoe’s range. In the broad expanse of the collection, one finds: lyric poems, haiku, lo-ku, odes, place poems, memorable prose poems, as in “An Incident in Paris,” and moving confessional pieces like “Puppet” (a piece dedicated to his daughter).
In Viet Nam, Steptoe’s job was to search for mines, tunnels, and enemy ambushes. Few soldiers engaged in such an activity could plunge into the bowels of that violent earth without courage, a willingness to walk past fear, and great faith. Decades removed from that physical conflict, readers will find that Lamont B. Steptoe is still on watch—still on patrol. Oracular Rumblings and Stiltwalking bears witness of a poet continuing to explore unknown territory with courage, risk, and faith. Though the battlefield he now examines is set in the depths of issues of justice, Lamont B. Steptoe is still alert, still fighting, and still a diamond standing.