Rickey Laurentiis

Rickey Laurentiis covers many different social issues throughout his collection titled Boy with Thorn. While these issues are not explicitly connected to one another by time period or type of trauma, Laurentiis bridges a gap between these events. Laurentius draws inspiration from a wide span of material. He utilizes biblical stories, Greek myth and art, Egyptian myth, slavery, or everyday abuses, if one can refer to them in such a way without making them seem mundane. Laurentiis struggles with the idea that historical events have objective truths about them, yet they are still shaped through people’s memory and imaginations. This allows for everyone’s own experience to transform their relationship with these events. Through this collection

of poems, he grapples with these thoughts, placing himself, or his speaker into tragic moments that occurred in order to demonstrate this affect. These events often affected black and or queer men specifically. By exploring and challenging his interpretation of the world around him he is reclaiming history or creating a history where a recorded history may not even exist. Throughout this experience he remains aware that he is looking back at history from a personal lens that is intricately and abundantly shaped by his experiences and beliefs which, of course, are unique to him.
The primary example that Laurentiis recognizes that many of these poems are simply interpretations of events and do not hold the same factual validity of other forms of history collection is through his means of presenting dialogue. Typically dialogue in stories, and sometimes poems, is written in between quotation marks. However, instead of differentiating these words with the standard use of quotations, or simply not distinguishing the dialogue from the other text, Laurentiis usually decides to italicize them. This choice could be in line with his idea of inserting one’s own imagination and memory into a historical event, and therefore removing the finality of dialogue put into quotation marks. If one sees a text in quotations, it is taken as fact that someone said those exact words. However, by rarely including quotation marks into his work, he removes that certainty and leaves the reader to question the validity of memory and interpretation. For example, in “Vanitas with Negro Boy” Laurentiis writes, “He would put the skull / on the table (And nearest to the worn flowers, sir, or nearer to the flute?)” (Laurentiis 22) This poem is an ekphrastic poem, which is common among many of the poems in Boy with Thorn. Typically, ekphrastic poems are used to describe a piece of art in great detail. Laurentiis follows this traditional model a few times in his collection, but even if some of his poems do not directly address an art piece, but rather an event, they could still be considered ekphrastic because of their focus on description and reinterpretation of scenes whether real or imaginary. Throughout Boy with Thorn Laurentiis’ uses the ekphrastic poem to create new meanings of classic and sometimes ancient works that apply to humankind today, especially relating them to his own personal experience as a queer black man.
Laurentiis recognizes his own insertion of his opinion and perspective into this event and this artwork.

By avoiding quotation marks, he avoids taking the liberty of claiming this as factual. He uses a similar tactic in “Writing an Elegy.” This is a poem about Spanish moss which is both used as a stereotype of the south but is also very prevalent in certain parts of the south, including New Orleans, where Laurentiis has spent a lot of time. In the poem, Laurentiis addresses one of the few tales that were created in order to explain the origin of this strange plant. This particular tale says that a Spanish conquistador bought a native woman to marry, but she was scared of him, so she ran into a tree. He tried to follow her, and when she jumped out of the tree into the river, he attempted to jump too, but his beard got stuck into the tree, which broke his neck and killing him. (Booth) Laurentiis writes, “If not for his lust, his sickness to chase, to claim her; if not for that Native woman’s quick intelligence, out-climbing…” (Laurentiis 27) This dialogue is from the perspective of the friends of the Spanish man who died. This use of italics rather than quotation marks is doing two things. It recognizes that this story is a fable, and not factual to begin with, but it also recognizes Laurentiis’ own addition into the legend. He continues to remind the audience of the lack of factual truth in the words people are saying through dialogue throughout his entire

collection.
In order to explore history, especially through art and media, Laurentiis inserts the speaker into these artworks so that he can access the event rather intimately. Two of these poems include “I Dreamt I Saw Two Men” and “Boy with Thorn”, which I will address later. In “I Dreamt I Saw Two Men”, Laurentiis writes a reaction to the men in African who are burned at the stake for being homosexual. While this takes place in Africa in a more modern time, its connection to the lynching of black people in America is apparent, and Laurentiis is aware of this link. Through the lines, “Two men hoisted hung up not American the rope / Not closed on their breathing / But this rope tied them spine to spine somehow / Suspended / From the mood of a tree not American they were / African Ugandan Nigerian.” (Laurentiis 4) Laurentiis makes it explicitly clear that these are not Americans. This is necessary because the image of ropes and trees are strongly tied to lynching in the American mind. But what really makes this piece stand apart is how Laurentiis places himself in an intimate position in relation to the event in order to really express the possible relationship one can have with historical events even if they’re physically or temporally separated from it. “And how did I move from that distance to intimacy / So close I could see / The four soles of their feet so close I was kneeled / Could lick / those feet as if I was because I became / the fire who abided.” (Laurentiis 5) Laurentiis positions himself as the actual fire that is being used to destroy these men to cross the disconnect that one who hasn’t actually experienced this event would have. This speaks to the power of reimagining and recreating a relationship with history and art, that seems as if it’s inaccessible and unchanging, but you can still develop an intimate relationship with it despite that lack of closeness.
In Black Iris, a poem referring to the painting by the same name by Georgia O’Keeffe, Laurentiis does what one is supposed to do with art.

He interprets the painting using his experience and goes as far as inserting himself into the piece. Many have interpreted the painting as being related to female genitalia, and the speaker in this poem sees a similar image in the painting and has an interesting response due to his implied sexuality. “Now anything could / go in there: a fist, veined, fat. / A body. And here runs the blood / through the body, deep, watery. / And here runs the message in the blood: / This is it – fuck her fag like you’re supposed to.” (Laurentiis 9) In this painting the speaker sees what society expects of him, he imagines what his biological and physical response should be to the female body, even through the painting of a flower. These expectations are expressed in the lines, “I should want to fit into it, stand up in it, / rest, as would any beast inside a stable. / I should want to own it, force it mine, / to know it is my nature, and of / course don’t I? Why shouldn’t I want?” (Laurentiis 9) Even if this is not from a man who identifies as queer, Laurentiis is commenting on the fact that if he does not perform in a certain way, primarily by claiming ownership over another human being, then that implies something about his sexuality. He talks about the expectation that men face today, and this expectation is not something that is internal or intrinsic,

but rather comes from outside forces. He does this by relating himself to a calf that sits beside its dead mother, “That will be / me, there, shaking, my voice shaking, / like the legs of the calf, who – out of fear? / out of duty?... / Because a voice outside of him makes him.” (Laurentiis 10) By using a painting that many people have interpreted as sexual, Laurentiis looks beyond the interpretation of the painting to the affect it has on the viewer. This is what he does throughout the collection by not solely presenting to the reader an event or piece of art, but rather, presenting those things and then interpreting them from a unique perspective. This is used as an example of how one is supposed to interact with a historical event or piece of art. The meaning is not determined solely by the creator of it, rather it’s created through the conversation, so to speak, between the piece or event and the person who is in contact with it.
In the poem “Of the Leaves That Have Fallen” Laurentiis explores the importance of having a complete history. In the poem he addresses another poem titled “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery” that was written by Walter Stevens. Laurentiis is primarily critiquing the fact that Stevens omits the lives and deaths of those in the cemetery in which the poem takes place. In response, Laurentiis focuses on the horrific deaths of black people who were lynched in the south. The references that Laurentiis uses in order to create this poem are photographs of people who were lynched. (Donnelly) Because he’s using a sort of art form or media and describing these images, once again Laurentiis uses the ekphrastic poem. In a way, because of his primary goal of revising and having a constant relationship with history, his entire collection can be seen as ekphrastic since it’s in reference to, and often describing media, artforms, and primarily events.