At the heart of acclaimed poet Lorna Goodison’s seventh book of poetry – her first published in Canada – is music, moving from a slow ska, a hard rocksteady, and a sweetie-come-brush-me bossanova, to line and sight gratitude psalms, lionheart outlaw anthems, and Miles Davis, blown by the winds to a concert in Berlin. Many of the poems are about those not heard or less counted, those who live in places like the favelas of Rio or the Kingston slum called Moonlight City. Goodison chronicles how “from shameports we passed through whale-belly nights of no return”, or from prison through the fields of Tecumseh on a Greyhound bus to Detroit. And she journeys, as they must have, to hell, this time in a marvellous translation of the canto about Brunetto Latini from Dante’s Inferno, where she meets Mr. Brown, a Jamaican duppy conqueror from her own land of look behind. Set mainly in her native Jamaica but universal in its concerns, this book, rare and special, is the real thing.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Jamaican poet Goodison's seventh collection roots itself not only in the lush landscapes and turbulent history of the Caribbean, but in far-flung poetic territories like Ann Arbor and Rio de Janeiro; Yeats's Sligo, Wordsworth's Westmoreland and Van Gogh's imagined Orient. These mappings bring surrealism to incantatory rituals, the clearest examplesbeing "The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner" and "Max Ernst Painting," where "this woman with her head gone// she is partly a nun, partly naked maja" is offered as a clue in examining the mysterious aesthetic of the mutilated female form in art. Goodison continues to deftly expose the distortions of so-called "objectivity" in defining the literary arts in "The Mango of Poetry." Here she subverts a modern definition of poetry as "silence," and compares the voluptuous fluidity of poetry to a mango, eaten in a "bombay colored blouse" to be stained by the fruit. In the book's first two sections, "My Mother's Sea Chanty" and "My Father's Country," Goodison honors people such as Miss Mirry ("the ill-tempered domestic helper who hated me"), grandmother Hannah and Great-grandmother Leanna, with loving and vividly detailed histories. What is perhaps most fascinating in this collection is Goodison's formidable scope and exquisite vernacular style. While the final lines of many of these poems may seem quiet, perhaps even too subdued in contrast with more edgy sensual details, the book continually surprises with its insistently elegant, spiritual core and crystalline intelligence.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“[Goodison is] among the finest poets writing today.”
–World Literature Today
“Goodison advances from strength to strength.…[She focuses] the diamond lens of her incantatory verse on the culture and people of her homeland in the Caribbean.…”
–Booklist (starred review)
“[Goodison’s work] continually surprises with its insistently elegant, spiritual core and crystalline intelligence.”
–Publishers Weekly
–World Literature Today
“Goodison advances from strength to strength.…[She focuses] the diamond lens of her incantatory verse on the culture and people of her homeland in the Caribbean.…”
–Booklist (starred review)
“[Goodison’s work] continually surprises with its insistently elegant, spiritual core and crystalline intelligence.”
–Publishers Weekly
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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I love poetry, but .............................,
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This review is from: Travelling Mercies (Paperback)
I love poetry; all types of poetry. I am neither offended by 'free verse' nor bored by rhyme. I do, however, need verse that is intelligible. I gave this 2 stars because there were just a few poems in the book that were interesting. Realizing that I do not share a cultural or racial history with Ms Goodison, there may be things I just don't get. This is not a book I could recommend.
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