Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one.and#8221;
and#151; from the preface
I was born to grow,
alongside my garden of plants,
poems
like
this one
So writes Alice Walker in this new book of poems, poems composed over the course of one year in response to joy and sorrow both personal and global: the death of loved ones, war, the deliciousness of love, environmental devastation, the sorrow of rejection, greed, poverty, and the sweetness of home. The poems embrace our connections while celebrating the joy of individuality, the power we each share to express our truest, deepest selves. Beloved for her ability to speak her own truth in ways that speak for and about countless others, she demonstrates that we are stronger than our circumstances. As she confronts personal and collective challenges, her words dance, sing, and heal.
Review
and#147;[These poems] grow as naturally on the page as grass and flowers, yet never try to conceal a terrain of early graves, emotional land mines, and levies of sorrow.and#8221;
and#151; Gloria Steinem
and#147;A lifeboat in a storm, warm soup in the mouth, a rhumba in the streets of the heart.and#8221;
and#151; Jack Kornfield
and#147;These are powerful anthems of womanhood and age, although just as likely to be empowering to men and to the not-yet-old.and#8221;
and#151; Booklist
and#147;Walkerand#8217;s many fans wonand#8217;t be disappointed by this book.and#8221;
and#151; Publishers Weekly
and#147;The poems sing of joy and pain, loss and grief, love and transformation, with results that are redemptive.and#133;Highly recommended for all readers of contemporary poetry and for anyone interested in African American literature.and#8221;
and#151; Library Journal
Synopsis
Alice Walker is beloved for her ability to speak her own truth in ways that speak for and about countless others. Here she confronts personal and collective challenges in words that dance, sing, and heal. As Shiloh McCloud describes in her foreword, Walkers poems contain “the death of loved ones and the birth of new ideas, the sorrow of rejection and the deliciousness of love, the sweetness of home, familial abandonment, and what it means to belong to the greater world family.” As Walker writes in her preface, the “empty” half of a glass holds “a rainbow that could exist only in the vacant space.” Musing on the role of dance, which gives this collection its title, she writes, “though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one.”
Synopsis
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Walker ("The Color Purple") confronts personal and collective challenges in words that dance, sing, and heal, in this new collection of poems. b&w illustrations.
About the Author
Alice Walker is known around the world for her fiction, poetry, essays, and human rights activism. She was honored with the 2010 Lennon Ono Grant for Peace and has been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.