Don’t put a label to this book after you’ve read the blurb, or even poem or two. Just read and enjoy. Why? Because, although Skyfall by Robert A. Stubblefield is poetry, it will keep surprising you with the imagery it offers you. It will show memories, motivate, tease, make you think, make you re-think and make you smile in different occasions and in no particular order. Skyfall by Robert A. Stubblefield is like a roller-coaster of emotions with poems at different speeds.

With contious structured poems in verse Robert A. Stubblefield starts the book reminding himeslef and telling the readers about his father, portraying him as a wise, caring and strict father figure. This is rare to read and important, because fathers are not appreciated enough, specially in this day and age.

After reading the second poem, you do get a sense of how the words of Robert reach profound meanings and are able to convey in their brevity an expanse of thoughts, situations and meanings, like finding and maintaining a relationship to and through marriage, the good and the bad times, and how happy both are to have each other. The union is seen as sacred, as it should and it’s refreshing to see how people still think this way, and gives you hope for the future. Beautiful. Once you add the erotic poems that are quite raw… you get to see how diverse this book is.

As in the previous books – reviews here – , women, in particular, Black women, are one of the center-topics in this collection of poems. They are revered and criticized, they are shown as angels, and at times, raggedy bitches, queens in potential and lovers, it’s honest and crude, which is refreshing to read. It’s not like the author is trying to idolize black women, he is only giving out his experiences and points of views of and with different women in his poems, and you can tell that there are a lot of different women in his life, lol.

One poem will, if you are American, want to take a step back and ask yourself if you have rose coloured glasses on yourself. It’s about the US being a third-world country with a Gucci belt, and although it’s quite short, it’s powerful.

Most poetry books are written in a presentation mode, but Skyfall is written in a conversational mode, where it is as if the author was talking to you and replying to your thoughts. It’s quite intuitive and original, which created a different experience of reading. Nice.

Then you have other things that will relate to the Black American reading this, and that there are references to thoughts of Elijah Mohammed, and why he was right and how it doesn’t matter trying to change the ways of people stuck in their ways, because their ways benefit them, and how you must adapt and be realistic about it because if not, you will be risking your own life.
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The long-poem form, in a one-stanza style might not suit every reader, but once you get into the rhythm of it, you barely notice it. Yes, there are times in the poem where the various stanzas style would have improved the reading-flow and enhanced the poem, but we get it.

Love, sacrifice, dancing, thought and remembrance of others that went are common themes on the book and in several poems, which allows the reader to know the author without the author talking much about himself, and while learning about others and appreciating and missing them through the eyes of the author, which is quite an easy experience if we are to say.

This book is a good and easy read that will give you a solid understanding of what is like to be an aware African American wanting change, without being preached at and while having fun and getting be reminded on how to appreciate yourself, and your own efforts. One can say that it’s culturally-specific, but anyone that is interested in reading poetry that is deep, to the point and expansive, should grab a copy of this book, I think that this collection is much lighter and easily digestible than the previous two and will cater to a wider audience outside its main target reader.

Cover Score: 7.4/10

Book score: 8.1/10

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