Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s poetry collection Kinds of Grace explores connections to familial history and mental health in one of the year’s most powerful (and unforgettable) books.
Jose Hernandez Diaz wrote of the book:
“McCauley skillfully incorporates an economy of language with evocative imagery and inspiring storytelling. An empowered, engaging voice. Masterful code-switching: honoring Black and Boricua cultures. Never apologizing. McCauley is always comfortable in protest and song. McCauley is a must-read poet and author; a rising star in the literary world!”
In her own words, here is Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s Book Notes music playlist for her poetry collection Kinds of Grace:
Kinds of Grace is easily the hardest book I’ve ever written but it is also deeply precious to me. It was written from 2018-2022 and chronicles, in poetry, the speaker’s experiences with Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria, her relationship to her parents, love, mental illness and healing racial wounds. The soundtrack I created was softer, more somber than the playlist for When Trying to Return Home; it’s a soundtrack that details a process of self-discovery. The entire book is about being in-progress as a person. It includes a wide range of genres that examine the complexities of the human experience, loss, and learning how to give yourself up to grace. I hope you enjoy it.
“Giovanni” by Jamila Woods
The first part of Kinds of Grace starts where my first hybrid collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF left off. The speaker has finally found a sense of self-determination and pride, in her ancestors, her family and herself. Still, she hasn’t found solace. In the first poem “The Past,” the speaker is plagued by the past, of wounds of love and racial strife, but she decides to “defy hauntings” and step forward brazenly. She declares, for example, in “Without Control”, “limitations are a scarcity..” and leans into the idea of Jamila Woods’s song dedicated to Nikki Giovanni, that “I’m protected/Joy said it preyed on me, mama burned sage for me/None can take that energy away from me…” This song is a wonderful anthem for stepping into one’s power.
“Grace” by Jeff Buckley
In a collection called Kinds of Grace I of course had to include a song that examines the idea of grace under fire. In this song, the speaker longs for completion and forgiveness from a woman, but in this collection the speaker seeks that kind of forgiveness and love within herself. I adore the chorus “Wait in the fire,” because so much of waiting requires walking through holy, painful, scorching, cleansing flames.
“Waiting for You” by Nick Cave
“Waiting for You” is a gorgeous song by Nick Cave. In the collection I have a few poems about many kinds of love and loss. There is a poem in Kinds of Grace called “Waiting” about repressing emotions because “sometimes it’s better not to say anything at all” as Cave says. This song has a sorrowful, ambiguous ending, like the poem. The tone of the song is lush; it near billows and envelops.
“Daughter” by Beyonce
I’m totally interested in Beyoncé as a cultural symbol but now’s not the time for me to go on and on. The song “Daughter” on Cowboy Carter is stunning to me. In addition to the soaring lyrics, the artist establishes a legacy of defiance (“If you cross me I’m just like my father, I am colder than Titanic water.”) In a collection that examines what it means be a Black Latina woman who feels as if she “belongs” to her father and Mami but is also looking for her own independence, this song felt apt.
“Preciosa” by Marc Anthony
Puerto Rico is in my sangre; it’s my mother’s blood. In this book, the speaker’s connection to her mother’s island and her ability to navigate it and her family, understand it and accept it is all part of the speaker’s journey. The book also showcases paintings by my prima (Maritza González Cintrón) who lives in Guayanilla, PR. My middle name also comes from her. In “Preciosa”, Anthony croons and cries for Puerto Rico, calls it “preciosa” and he details the complex history of the island and insists that Puerto Rico is rich and beautiful. This song usually brings the house down at his concerts and it still always makes me and my mother cry.
“Windmills of My Mind” by Grady Tate
This song made me want to become a poet. I was about twelve and I found Grady Tate’s music in my Dad’s vinyl collection and I was entranced by the song’s lyrics; this idea that the mind was vast and wild and calm and terrifying and ever-spinning because I lived so much in my mind, even as a kid. I wrote my first (bad) poem in response to that song. Especially as someone who was later diagnosed with mental illness, the lines about the mind “Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel” felt very relevant to me. It’s a slow burn of a piece; it spirals and sings.
“Cry for Me” by Lecrae ft. Taylor Hill
When I was a child, I was told that I couldn’t have any struggles with mental health because I “had slaveblood” therefore I was perceivably and comparably strong enough to withhold any pain. I get this idea but it had a disastrous effect on my psyche. As a Black woman, I was expected to be emotionless to survive. “Cry for Me” by rapper Lecrae is about embracing vulnerability and all of your powerful “thorns” as a Black person; it’s about struggling with suicidal ideation and coming up on top, about finally realizing that no matter what people say you “are clean.”
“Mary Magdalene” by FKA Twigs
I’m a huge fan of FKA Twigs; she sounds like nobody else and is wonderfully unique. In the song “Mary Magdalene”, the speaker relates to Mary Magdalene and sees herself as a complicated, fearful, real woman, a “creature of desire.” She lives in fire; she also aches and cowers and runs. My goal for this collection was to show a multi-faceted speaker and set of speakers who encapsulate a woman who desires, loves, runs, accepts the inevitable of the next moment. This song certainly speaks to the themes of the collection.
“The Projectionist” by Sleeping Last
As a kid who was always dreaming up stories I related to the line of this wonderful song: “When I was young, I fell in love with story…” I tend to see the world in stories and projections, for better or for worse. There’s a poem in the collection called “I can’t see you when you’re standing right in front of me…” in which the speaker sees herself in a precious love but questions if she fully knows this person because she is seeing through the eyes of projection. She then wonders if she can see anyone without her own projections. This song is about “leaving our shadows behind us now…” and realizing that actually seeing the world as it is, in all of its realities and not fantasy, can still be beautiful.
“Willow” by Taylor Swift
This song was playing constantly in Fort Pierce, Florida on the radio while I was living there and working on Kinds of Grace and recovering from hospitalization and a mental break. It was a perfect pandemic song, gentle, painful, tinged with hope. The song reminded me of the man who would eventually become my husband a year later, when it goes “I’m waiting for you to take my hand/wreck my plans/that’s my man.” The speaker of the song is also a woman who is both brushfire and soft flavor; the central relationship of the song is full of contradictions too. When Swift says “I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night/Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife…” the song could easily relate to the speaker of Kinds of Grace.
“I Got My Eyes On You” by Gary Clark Jr.
This song is about a speaker who makes a decision to allow himself to be loved after a long period of distress, disappointments, heartbreak and strife (“we were bonded by…bondage.”) I love the agency in this song, that the speaker has decided to trust in love and move forward on his own terms instead of waiting for love to come to him. The speaker challenges his lover “Who do you think you are?” but softens when he realizes he has to permit himself to love again. The speaker in Kinds of Grace goes through a similar journey.
“Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen
I still think this is one of the most exquisite songs ever written. It expresses the power and pain of loving a God you can’t see, taste, touch, smell, or just about loving something higher than yourself that is utterly transcendent (“Your faith was strong but you needed proof”). I think there’s a great humility and power in giving yourself over to someone/something and allowing yourself to become malleable but also unyielding, passionate and tender at the same time. I do believe these things can all exist all together. There’s also great strength in saying “hallelujah” and just letting go of all the baggage you carry and giving it up completely. I’ll always love this song and think it speaks to Kinds of Grace distinctly.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s playlist for her story collection When Trying to Return Home
Jennifer Maritza McCauley is a writer, poet, and university professor. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimbilio, CantoMundo and the Sundress Academy for the Arts. She holds an MFA from Florida International University and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Missouri. The author of the cross-genre collection SCAR ON/SCAR OFF, she is an assistant professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.