Review: Dark Days

New Meaning
Review: Dark Days

 Joshua Wilson
 Roger Reeves
​ Essay Collection  
 Graywolf Press, pp. 240 
 Cost: $26.00 (Hardcover)
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“Fugitive essays”—the subtitle of Roger Reeves’ essay collection Dark Days—exists as a diminutive outlier on the book’s abstract orange and black cover. Positioned out at the margin, its small font rises vertically as if insisting, by its obvious contrast to the bold and horizontal title that reigns next to it, to have its insinuations considered. I think about the meaning of the word fugitive and I am immediately bombarded by the typical connotations that leach from its letters, connotations that are all derivatives of criminality. But it is by design that the reader’s considerations are provoked with such patterns of common thought, for the directive of this book is to purposely present and then subsequently eschew these typical conventions so that new and enlightening definitions are granted residency.

Reeves’ collection achieves the aforementioned task by first presenting itself as an outpouring of voice that—with a vigor that has been pressurized by years of repression—undresses the sordid systems of our society. He writes, “the problem of the twenty-first century is the problem of the American empire, the cyclical and savage nature of it” (42). With surgically precise and elaborately dense language, Reeves splays open America’s scabbed skin, and forces us to look upon the rancid flesh that has subjugated, with its suppressing stench, populations of people considered ethnically inferior.

These include: a recount of his visit to the McLeod plantation, personal letters written to police brutality victim Michael Brown, a powerful riff on his daughter’s fear of emergency sirens, and a thorough investigation into antebellum “Hush Harbors.” While the breath of emotional resonance included in these explorations alone would suffice in edifying his audience on the virulence of supremacism, Reeves further enhances his testimony with curated references that range from OutKast lyrics to Toni Morrison’s renowned novel Beloved. What results is a skillful scrutiny of America’s exposed flesh, a move to venture through its overwhelming scent to rip a sample from the bone for closer examination. Beneath our eyes the magnified evidence writhes in its cellular form; through the power of Reeves’ words, our attention permeates the shell of pledges and preambles that are no longer able to disguise this innate attribute: “That prison is not out there in the dark, in the unterritorialized ether of America, but it’s in the well-lit center of us darkly” (197). 

The phrase “which is to say” is used a number of times in this collection. It is an idiosyncratic motif that Reeves implements at the end of a heavy and detailed discussion to deliver a decisive conclusion. I grew fond of this rhythmic additive because of its ability to act as a linguistic coda: a tangible cue for us to reflect on what was, while also directing our attention toward what must become. That insistence on movement, on progression, is what constitutes the essence of this collection. Although we are presented with those horrid star-spangled seeds of desecration, of Jim Crow, of COINTELPRO, of collateral damage; Reeve’s shows us that the ramifications are only obstacles to be hurdled as we run toward something new: “Which is to say: at the end of suffering, there is a door” (84).

Dark Days is a blueprint for those subjugated to remove the yolks that oppress them. We learn that being a fugitive is only considered criminal by those who wish to halt the process of revitalization. We learn that a fleeing from proscribed definition is essential to the formation of a true identity. We are urged toward the shadowed margins where a welcoming silence exists, and it is there that the marginalized and oppressed can hear the tenor of their voices for the first time and begin to grow and develop.

What does growing look like? In these essays, Reeves professes the importance of love, of dancing, of embracing indefinite sensation. He shows how being content within the stillness of ourselves can provoke pure outbursts of liberating ecstasy: “Ecstasy as that which can detach us from the teleological, from the old patterns of the past that delimit the potential for a new pattern, a maximal freedom” (50).

This collection conjures a fear, an anxiety, a burning anger that has the potential to induce a furious ripping at the roots of America. Efforts like this may be futile, and inevitably end in a wild flailing in which it is hard to decipher who is actually doing the ripping. But Reeves calms us, places a hand on our shoulder and shows us a better way out. Reading this book is like an extension of the visual spectrum, and the avenues toward freedom that rise vertically from the margins begin to appear everywhere: behind closed eyes, in between breaths of prayer, accenting the yelps of Dionysian joy. As we escape down those avenues, Reeves implores that “we must embrace the formlessness of nowhere if we mean to come to who we want to be” (205). We must define our own dark days.​