Sylvia Jones Speaks to Me: Television Fathers
Reviewed by Drew Pisarra

"Television Fathers"
Poetry
Meekling Press, 2024

Never judge a book by its cover. But nobody ever said, never judge a book by its title. You know why? Because the title actually matters. And so, I’d like to start off by acknowledging that poet Sylvia Jones’ debut collection has a seriously kick-ass one: Television Fathers. Those two simple words are so rich in meaning. To wit: There’s the idea that TV has taken the place of the father in some households, households in which fathers are absent or withdrawn, households where the TV is always on. There’s the idea that uses “fathers” as a verb. And what has television fathered, pray tell? Oh, perhaps the internet, online streaming, maybe our begrudging acceptance of A.I. as an authority figure, facts be damned. One could even argue that television has fathered our shortened attention spans and our demand to be entertained 24/7. Finally, there’s the television fathers themselves – reality’s Ozzy Osborne and Ozzie Nelson as well as fictional fathers like Good Times’ James (John Amos), Full House’s Uncle Jesse (John Stamos), and Mad Men’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm). Speaking of which…

I will readily admit that I am predisposed to like a poetry collection named Television Fathers because I understand the concept of the TV as a parent all too well. I know firsthand the sitcom family as a warped role model. I also happen to have worked in the television industry for nearly a decade – notably, for the aforementioned TV series Mad Men on behalf of its parent network AMC. So when Jones’ launches into a trio of snappy Don Draper poems, I for one am easily hooked. Was it “Don Draper Eulogizes Norman Lear” or “Don Draper Acquires Himself an Art Residency” that she read at the Enoch’s Coffee mic during the “Poetry Hell” reading series this past summer in NYC? I don’t recall. But revisiting both those verses in the last few days, I’m reminded that Jones is a master of titles which aren’t afraid of doing some heavy lifting, which may set you up for what follows and deliver a punchline all their own. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a poem capped by the phrase “If I Was a Man” or the simple assertion, “Straight People Are the Reason I Can’t Read”? Even the book’s section headers – “Paywall Poems” and “Drywall Highway” – are more than decorative flourishes.

If you’re thinking at this point that Television Fathers is a series of paeans and parodies of paternity, please forgive me. Jones isn’t so reductive in her reflections, and contemporary culture-at-large is very much on her mind throughout her delightful debut. It’s better to consider the title as directional more than instructional. Admittedly the ekphrastic comes into play but it’s not Good Times and Full House that she’s nodding to so much as “Man with Shotgun and Alien,” a Noah Davis painting, and Bamboozled, Spike Lee’s wonderfully underrated satire. That last reference is the source of an especially effective six-poem series meditating – jarringly – on a blackface montage within the larger film, the final verse culminating with “Don’t ask me / any questions if / all of a sudden / I used to have a lot / of money”. As someone who’s a big fan of Jones’ muse here (I once wrote an essay championing Spike Lee’s movie musicals), I am struck by how much it helps when your personal tastes align with those of the writer you’re reading.

In “First Black Cop Bop,” for example, she uses a line from the Nas song “N.Y. State of Mind” like a scratch in the vinyl, a musical-literary hiccup to get you to the next stanza while leaving the current one midstream, without ever abandoning the poem’s lyrical unity as she hops from Beanie Babies and Gaddafi to Andrew Jackson and Harriet Tubman to Abner Louima and the poet herself. Her sampling gets even more sophisticated with a pair of seamless centos, “Perpetual Resin” and “Tender-Headed.” Citing a dozen or so of the authors with whom I’m most familiar, the first one incorporates Fanny Howe, Wilfred Owen, and Ishmael Reed while the second weaves in Philip Levine, Patricia Smith, Ilya Kaminsky, Wallace Stevens, Audre Lorde, Gary Soto, Fady Joudah, Cornelius Eady, Maggie Nelson, and Ross Gay. That’s well less than half of those represented. Probably, less than a quarter. Yet the construction is pure Jones. You could know none of these poets and still reap rewards. Jones is erudite without being elitist; and since her taste looks to be impeccable, she may have you seeking out poets whom you hadn’t yet considered like Harmony Holiday and Brigit Pegeen Kelly. But start with Sylvia Jones, first, I beg of you. Her first book of poemS may be foundational for great things ahead.