From Publishers Weekly
Choosing the spider as an inspired symbol for African American women, Jackson's first full-length collection holds enormous potential. In her hands the spider becomes the erotic female who variously wraps her legs around her mate, who foretells a guest's arrival and who is the ordinary worker who will: "spend my life weaving in three dimensions, / in solitary pursuit of fragile symmetry." Working with her sisters, the mythic spider can build nets strong enough to trap a lion. In a delightful account of the early civil rights struggle, Rosa Parks sits down beside Miss Muffet on the bus. The violent aspects of the insect world are vividly depicted, as in one poem about a wasp who kills a spider and then nests in that spider's corpse. Despite excellent passages, however, this volume as a whole disappoints. The spider image cannot sustain 100 pages, and Jackson's insistence upon applying it to every poem turns it into mere formula. A few poems have a catchy blues beat, but the majority fall flat. Individual pieces go on too long, telling rather than showing. And the weakest poems are so similar in tone to the best that individual triumphs are buried.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
Winner of the Chicago Sun-Times Book of the YearAward in Poetry; Winner of the Carl Sandburg Award for Poetry
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
