Title:	Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom
Author:	Marcia Douglas
Publisher:	Peepal Tree Press
Reviewer:	Barbara Nelson

Marcia Douglas' book Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom is published by Peepal Tree Press in the United Kingdom, now the largest independent publisher of Caribbean writing in the world.

Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom was a Poetry Book Society (PBS) recommendation.

The PBS, founded in 1953 by renowned writer T.S. Eliot, (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948), is an organisation devoted to developing and maintaining a readership for poetry in the United Kingdom.

Eliot believed that poetry "should aim at a representation of the complexities of modern civilization in language".

In making the recommenda-tion, the PBS selector commented: "Marcia Douglas has the kind of intent but relaxed concentration which ushers the reader into the life of a poem and makes the event - a wedding, a hot afternoon, an aeroplane journey - seem for a while like the centre of things. This is a rich and very welcome book."

True, unique

Douglas was born in England and grew up in Jamaica. She writes with a deep love, understanding and appreciation of the things that are truly and uniquely Jamaican.

The first section of the book titled Firefly is a collection of eleven poems. It starts with 'Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom':

"All the children of Cocoa Bottom went to see Mr. Samuel's electric lights.

The fireflies waited in the shadows,

The kling-klings swooped in from the hills,

Congregating in the orange trees."

This is followed by 'On Your Wedding Day':

"You soak in an enamel basin

And lather your skin with pink soap

For weeks you have massaged your knees with cocoa butter,

The red soil is gone from your toenails."

The section includes the poem about 'Viola Lee', who was so old, she was

"A patchwork of dry leavesÉ

When dengue fever broke out

She soaked her braids in bay rum,

Wrapped her head with banana leaves and

A cotton scarf bought at May Pen market."

Section Two is titled 'Half-Moon', and begins with 'Leaving For Ohio'

"My father is humming, At the cross, at the cross.

In the dusk, the long hills lit up with verandah lights

Encircle Kingston, a rhinestone bracelet

On the wrinkled arm of an old woman.

And except for the drunk asleep beneath a stinking-toe tree,

Cradling his bottle of Red Stripe beer,

The roads to the Palisadoes are still empty."

In 'January, Binghamton NY' Marcia writes:

"In this place

I don't know the names of birds

Or the tree in the yard across the street

Or what hills I see through my window

Spread like welts across the cold back of the Earth ..."

'I'm Afraid of Losing Things' on Page 51 is particularly poignant.

"Now that your hair is gray

I remember you sitting in church

With your legs crossed at the ankles

Raking the leaves in the front yard,

Scolding the dog who left paw prints on the floor

Feeding the chickens,

The moon on your finger nails.

And I'm afraid of losing you

Now that your hair is gray."

The third and final section is 'Eight Pointed Star'

In this section are the poems 'Voice Lesson From The Unleashed Woman's Unabridged Dictionary', 'Nantucompong', 'Blessed Harvest: to the Woman in the Painting on My Livingroom Wall', 'Excerpt from the Bloated Woman's Book of Hunger', and 'The Gift of Tongues.'

Marcia writes:

'Nantucompong' is for Maroon Nanny who folded back her hands between her legs and caught the shots of fifty soldiers, teaching us 'Nantucompong'.

"In streets along Kingston Harbour

Down by river gullies

On yam hillsides you see them -

Their necks long

The ridge of their lips swollen and dangerous.

They can feed a house full of mouths

With a little saltfish, two handfuls of flour.

Rise up against them

And their eyes send you limping

Back into the macca bush."

The final poem is 'The Gift of Tongues'.

It begins:

"When Daddy got baptised in Yallahs River,

He rose up speaking -

Oh-shali-waa-shali-mahi-wa

It continues:

Years have passed now, and I understand:

Daddy spoke for the feeling, not just the language,

It's like after a woman's been in labour for days

And then a small body is pushed from between her legs,

Oh, shali."

And ends:

"I picture myself an old woman on a sofa.

Blue light slants through the blinds

And makes horizontal marks like notepaper on the wall."

I fill in the lines:

Oh shali waa,

Shali mahi wa.

Shali.

Shali.