Customer Reviews

The Goddess of Gumbo

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This slender volume contains a wealth of well-crafted poems that, like a good gumbo, combine diverse ingredients to form a delicious and satisfying meal. They feel deeply personal, yet recognizable; ranging from the adolescent-like anticipation of a first fancy-dress affair to the stories of ancestors buried/living in the swirling history of Gulf Coast passions, slavery, and politics.
Like a really good gumbo, these are poems that must be worked with. One can neither skim nor skimp, but like that special dish with its roots on three continents, these poems deliver a complex and rich sauce filled with fortifying and sensual bites of life. Yum.

Kendra Hamilton's poetry speaks the voice of a modern southern woman who has lived hard, loved hard and survived to speak her truth. She takes the reader with her into her world, as the true gardener she is. She tills the verses until it pushes up out of the reader like fruit coming to harvest. She has worked this collection of life poems until it was ripe and ready to be picked and consumed by the reader.

Not for the faint of heart but for the woman who has been through the fires of a life well lived, she makes no excuses for her sacrifices. I recognized the Goddess of Gumbo in so many women I've known and she made me cry.

The Goddess of Gumbo continues to inspire me in ways that I never thought a book of poetry would or could. Every poem that I've read has touched me deeply in some way. The imagery is vivid and sensuous, the stories are compelling and thought-provoking. Don't sleep on this book.