The creation of Central Park in New York City caused the destruction of Seneca Village, "Manhattan's first significant community of African American Property owners." This historic location was lost to the ages and "the only way to learn the story was to go to a book called The Park and the People: A History of Central Park."
135 years later, Marilyn Nelson revives this history through the lens of invented characters. Part fact and part fiction, My Seneca Village offers readers compelling insight into an overlooked community and invites them into a story, a world, lost to time and gentrification.
Nelson uses side-by-side text-- historical, firsthand accounts to the left, and character poems based on these accounts to the right-- to revive and rebirth a parallel Seneca Village through text. In doing so, Nelson creates a unique relationship between history, truth, and imagination. Her poems limit themselves to one page each. They play with form and meter, but focus especially on the quatrain and iambic pentameter.
http://www.namelos.com/my-seneca-village/
https://www.amazon.com/My-Seneca-Village-Marilyn-Nelson/dp/1608981967
Read more of the poems here:
"Watkins Laundry and Apothecary"
https://persimmontree.org/spring-2018/poems-by-marilyn-nelson/
Marilyn Nelson's Website:
https://marilyn-nelson.com/
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