A Wilderness of Riches , Voices of the Virginia Colony

About the Author: Lenny Lianne was raised in Northern Virginia and holds degrees in History, Creative Writing and Women’s Studies. Her award-winning poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, California Quarterly, Poet Lore and Rattle, just to name a few. She has received top awards from the Poetry Society of Virginia.

After Reading Lenny Lianne’s A Wilderness of Riches.
I believed I was finished with the 400th anniversary of the First Landing of the English at Cape Henry in what is now known as Virginia Beach. I read the stories, watched the plays, visited the monuments and memorials. When Publisher Jean Klein asked me to read these poems and give up a sentence or two, I thought “oh, no, what else can be said?” I began to read: the words grew into my head like living roots-- so invasive that my own dry words sound like poetry. The poems, called “voices of the Virginia colony” are divided into four sections.

First, Captain Smith’s Discourse on the Appetite for Exploration: the reader feels the sway of the ship, tastes the tangy salt air, longs for gilded riches, “waiting for the land of wealth to present itself like a new bride.” Here, the thread of marriage, brides, encounters of wild and desperate beauty; John Smith brought to his knees before the Powhatan King. The next section, From the Underside of History–Pocahontas in her Adult Years, delivers the well-imagined voice of the voiceless, as she begs for the tiny spark of her story to burst into light. The “small copper kettle” of deception, leading to her kidnapping, conversion and marriage to John Rolfe, then the forced life in the strange land of England where she was less than an exhibit.

And, the bridal theme continues in Brides for the Colony as we meet the women who’se lives turned inside out on the long journey into the unknowable, “all my training told me to take the valiant path that goes toward encounter, even though I knew so little of what was coming”. Even the voice from Grave JR156 cries out among six other women’s stories. Then the poems turn to the reluctant recognition that this vital new land hums inside the soul rather than shining with a false gold. “The moment happens, unheard and unhurried. We tell ourselves...we are outsiders to this place, though something ancient paces within each of us.”

And we can arrive where Americans have berthed for four centuries: to “a wilderness of riches” in part four, “And Know the Place for the First Time”. Here we see a slave trader compared to a Cottonmouth; we taste the beauty of a poisonous flower; we admire the bear, the newly called honeybee and the possum “practicing a perfect motherhood.” Touched with longing and regret, “we’ve learned that this land cedes it’s secrets in it’s own time and style”. This is a good read! Kristin Knowles, Norfolk, Va. June 16, 2008.