In “Call Her Woman and Bend the Knee: A Heroic Crown of Sonnets” by Phoebe Eligon-Jones aka Blupoetres, fifteen interlinked sonnets celebrate Black Womanhood, not just the beauty, but also the battle. The rose is a beautiful flower. But if you only talk about its petals and ignore the thorns, the soil it has to push through, and the pests it has to survive, you have told an incomplete story. Tracing its story back to Ancient Kemet (Egypt), Ethiopia and Timbuktu, the book reveals these women as not new to civilization, but foundational to it, even if history books have whitewashed their contributions.

According to Blupoetres, the black woman cannot be defined by a single role. She is the giver of life and child of a lineage. But although she existed before the Earth’s creation, she still needs to adjust her crown. Perhaps it has been there, but tilted by exhaustion and weight of survival.

Her life is not just a story but a movement the world should watch. She has been forged through fire and has come out priceless. She came before everyone else. She is original. She is God’s intentional masterpiece and His grand gesture of love, beauty, and power. She thrives in places never designed for her, like a lioness in alien territory. She is brilliant despite being denied education and despite being forced to mature under the most oppressive conditions.

This woman is honored through images that are Afrocentric and unapologetic. In a world that often tells the black woman she is less beautiful, these images say, “You are the standard.” Some of them feel ancient while others feel futuristic. But they blend so well in a manner that seems to say they have always been here, and will always be. These are images that are not afraid to be raw, the kind that removes the mask of strength so that at the end, their beauty feels more meaningful to the reader.

By making the sonnets to connect to each other by a chain of repeated lines, the reader is given a smooth line of continuity, not just to make the poem sound nice but to also mirror the unbroken lineage of Black Women. That continuity makes the reader not look away but to stay in the story, carrying the past with them even as they move forward and deeper into the story.

Rhyme is woven directly into the very fabric of each poem. In a book like this one which is meant to empower, rhyme becomes essential in ensuring the reader remembers the lines. Rhyme, complemented by figurative metaphors and personalization, as well as enjambment, creates a symphony of honor, the kind that settles in the bones and becomes part of you.

Writing “Call Her Woman and Bend the Knee: A heroic Crown of Sonnets” is like building a house with fifteen rooms, all connected, and the last room using pieces from all the others. Blupoetres outdoes herself by masterfully mixing ideas that could easily clash, yet they don’t. She doesn’t seek to impress but to speak the truth, to give back what was stolen from the Black woman, and to establish a lineage they can be proud of.

This book proves that poetry is not a solitary act but a conversation across time, space and generations. This makes it an ancestral bridge, a living archive, and a sacred inheritance. It is truly a gift to be treasured by every Black woman and girl who might still be learning that she is more than enough.