Looking for 'Cuda Brown

In Looking for Cuda' Brown, Thomas Park has written a beautiful, sad, witty, energetic, harrowing, haunting tribute to the strengths (and failings) of an African American community in the rural South. Identified by the documentary poem, "Birth of the Environmental Justice Movement" as Warren County, North Carolina, the community sits for its collective portrait throughout the manuscript, emerging via a rich spectrum of voices expertly called up by the author. I am particularly impressed by Thomas's range, combining interplay between a "gallery" of varied, vivid characters with a reflective, often philosophical personality/voice that appears to represent the author's perspective, in addition to a documentary mode that evokes the historical struggles of the community. When I think of Thomas, I think of the Audre Lorde quote, "Poetry is not a luxury; it is a vital necessity of our existence." His work-his own poems and his community activism to bring art to his local community-best exemplifies poetry as a vital necessity. I believe in his vision and I wish him every success in all of his future endeavors. Jan Clausen-Author, Lecturer @ Goddard College