Review: Interface by George T. Wilkerson
by Josh Hall
George T. Wilkerson’s Interface invites readers to join him in an intimate chronological journey through his life. “Part 1: Before” opens on “Busy Bodies,” a poem that attaches itself to the reader’s inner child. Even though I was not socialized in the projects where the outdoor landscape’s litter of bullet shells and “snakething” condoms juxtaposed the young lively bliss of children, the innocence in Wilkerson’s prose makes one feel as if they were squatting down in the dirt next to him, overturning rocks to count the critters underneath.
In the following poems, Wilkerson’s life progresses yet descends through childhood and adolescence in stories of abuse from his mentally ill father who was “... too proud / to admit he couldn’t / protect his kids / from himself,” of poverty’s shoddily constructed barriers to his dreams, and of the “purplish calluses” from his frequent meetings with a violent and discriminatory world. The scenery of “Busy Bodies” foreshadowed Wilkerson’s loss of innocence, but to watch Wilkerson’s childhood crumble beneath him remained as jarring as if there was no warning at all.
Even in the darkest moments in Wilkerson’s poetic retelling of his life and in the cramped impersonal confinements of death row, the reader is kept close to him. Though the sweetness of a shared childhood spirit disappears, a more mature sense of empathy develops and viscerally sits within the reader. Wilkerson’s poems unfold like saturated Polaroid pictures that are developing as you stare into them with a Baroque-style of motion.
Outside of being the title of this poetry collection and a poem inside of it, Wilkerson provides us a plethora of interfaces in these snapshots of free verse to ponder and explore. These interfaces range from Wilkerson’s premature coming of age in “Birth of a Revolutionary,” where “the silky texture of the American Dream” disintegrates from the cruel indifference of a teacher who punished him for lacking a tri-fold he could not afford, to the varying impacts of time — how solitary confinement’s damning endlessness eats men in “It Takes Nine Months to Delete the Sun,” how the passing years added a saccharine tint to the memory of his late teenage trip to Disneyland with his fiancée in “Entropy,” and in how the seasons interface with Wilkerson’s moods despite the perennial cinder block scenery that surrounds his life in “Autumn Icarus.”
On a larger scale, this work is a direct interface of who Wilkerson was with who he has become. The personal transformation Wilkerson enlightens readers to in Interface is compelling, making it a necessary work to interface and reckon with for a society that has lost face in redemption.
Josh Hall is pursuing a master’s degree of Data Science in Applied Public Affairs at American University (AU). He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Justice & Law from AU in May of 2022. He hails from the coastal city of New Bern, NC, where he first found his passion for working with others and creating community. He has since worked as a counselor, volunteer civics teacher, and resident assistant, and will be serving as an Assistant Community Director for two residence halls at AU this upcoming school year. His interests include creating spaces where restorative justice can thrive and researching America’s unsung history. He is an avid record collector and a lover of all things outdoors.