Carolina Ghost Woods [Paperback]

Judy Jordan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wintry in tone, titles and topics--"Ice molds my life" as one poem puts it--Jordan's debut scours the wooded terrain for metaphors of death ("It's dirt and dust after all") and trolls her family history for murders, suicides, threats and promises of the end. The governing influence here is Charles Wright, whose learned, long-lined, colloquial mysticism speaks through lines like "The dead stow my name in the slack of their mouths," or "the dead have me in their pocket," yet places such possessions in specific situations, as "When Hitchhiking into West Virginia" or when stuck in "the all-night deli." The book's wanderings come as a result of mourning for a variety of figures: the poet's grandmother, other relatives, friends, neighbors violently dead. As poems answer each other and develop the theme, the dead become the poet's lost form and lost work--particularly the mother. When the speaker watches toads possessing "faith in their wholeness and desire," she knows what she lacks. Alliteration, internal rhyme and other resources of sound are on impressive display throughout the book, which won last year's Walt Whitman award from the Academy of American Poets, but the whole can't quite lift grief out the specific grievings. (Apr.)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

It is hardly surprising that Jordan's Carolina Ghost Woods won the 1999 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets and the National Book Critics Circle Award, for the energy in this book is palpable and the language so inventive and so surprising as to remind you what poetry is all about. The poet has taken a hard look at her life as a sharecropper's daughter in the Carolinas and delivered something bolder and richer than one could ever have imagined.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: Louisiana State University Press (April 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807125563
• ISBN-13: 978-0807125564
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, May 24, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Carolina Ghost Woods (Hardcover)

I stumbled upon this book when Ms. Jordan came to a literary conference at the university I attend. This poetry is absolutely amazing. I'm fairly well read in contemporary poetry and this is the most startingly lucid book I have read all year. In my opinion it surpasses the works of more famous poets. June Jordan won the 1999 Walt Whitman Award of The Academy of American Poets for this book. Such greats as James Tate and Agha Shahid Ali sing her praises on the back cover, so it's not just me. Her poems take that extra step beyond beauty to brilliance, to truth. I simply cannot rave enough, and I'm definitely gushing at this point. I'll leave you with a small quote from my favorite poem, "Two Hours Before Sunrise." "I have lain in a johnboat/ in water churning with mating toads,/ thinking of nothing but the pond's depth/ and my desire to be picked clean." You will not regret buying this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keen observation and intensely honest, harsh and beautiful,, March 26, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Carolina Ghost Woods (Hardcover)

By happenstance we were introduced to this wonderful volume on an airplane, sitting next to author, Judy Jordan. She allowed me to leaf through her worn copy. While reading I asked her questions that were possibly painful, so moved was I by such honest and harsh and beautiful reflection and observation. Her words wrestled me into my own honesty/my own memoirs of observing violence/ of the solace of winter and of the woods and geese. The writing does justice to itself. This book is a gift of insight. No superlatives can I use other than to say, this is one of my all time keepers.

5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting and beautiful, September 30, 2008

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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Carolina Ghost Woods (Hardcover)

In this slender volume, justly hailed as a wonder by several reviewers, Judy Jordan crafts the most beautiful, thought-provoking and elegiac poetry out of the less promising circumstances - poverty, alcoholism, murder and death - and gives us lines we aren't likely to forget.

I came upon this book by pure chance, and I'm happy I did. Despite her often dismal subject matter, Judy Jordan is a joy to read. Get the book now, thank me later!