In which we will come as your guests and go again as guests in good standing
- Reading, books 2016, 160
160. Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems, by Lorna Goodison, 2006, with the selected poems coming from Guinea Woman, Travelling Mercies, and Controlling the Silver. This is the point at which Ms Goodison's poetry combines its inheritance from the European poetic canon with Caribbean, usually specifically Jamaican, references with maximum complexity (although North America does get a line here and there). There are poems in here easily readable by children but there are also poems so dense with meaning that, even familiar with euro-poetry and the creole of Jamaican culture as I am, reading them is more an act of faith in the author and her work than a receipt of immediate communication, although the most oblique still include the most beautiful images understandable in purely straightforward ways ("Chalk-white walls scripted / with calligraphy of ivy"). I do love reading these poems, and I think this is a better book in poetic terms than Guinea Woman, but I don't think it's the best introduction to Lorna Goodison's poetry except for readers who have a strong preference for learning to swim by being thrown in the sea - the sea might give us life, but we live on our islands. (5/5)
• He is a dandy who can dress sharp as a tack
always in bespoke black suits and white shirts.
People say he is a native of France or Haiti,
of his nationality he says 'Je suis les roi soleil.'
• Go greyhound
press driver press, pedal to the metal to the motor city.
Make up for time lost this day, fifteen minutes, ninety days,
five hundred Babylonian years.
• in hope of finding one or two smooth silver spoons
fallen careless from the mouths of deposed kings,
• I sighted what appeared to be a bonfire
in my garden, for the flame of the forest,
the japanese lanterns and the candlewood
were hot ablaze and the late poinsettia
leapt like flambeaux at the gateway.
I ran downstairs in my nightgown
to investigate this garden arson
and I saw you there, lost in wonder
at my full bloom conflagration.
• The egrets perch upon the trees like birds,
blossoms of birds, or white-feathered flowers.
• the high-heeled shoes, tendrils of suede straps
x-ing across insteps, kissing her long narrow feet.
• The plain terra cotta rounded cooking pot
patterned with my daughter's palm print,
the goblet I glazed with crushed gems, then
sketched on with thorns, will all be broken.
Only the weaver birds, and ants who sip raindrops
from shards, will ever drink again from my pots.
O weaver birds and ants who drink of raindrops
promise you will come as guests to sip of my pots.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/597366.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.
160. Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems, by Lorna Goodison, 2006, with the selected poems coming from Guinea Woman, Travelling Mercies, and Controlling the Silver. This is the point at which Ms Goodison's poetry combines its inheritance from the European poetic canon with Caribbean, usually specifically Jamaican, references with maximum complexity (although North America does get a line here and there). There are poems in here easily readable by children but there are also poems so dense with meaning that, even familiar with euro-poetry and the creole of Jamaican culture as I am, reading them is more an act of faith in the author and her work than a receipt of immediate communication, although the most oblique still include the most beautiful images understandable in purely straightforward ways ("Chalk-white walls scripted / with calligraphy of ivy"). I do love reading these poems, and I think this is a better book in poetic terms than Guinea Woman, but I don't think it's the best introduction to Lorna Goodison's poetry except for readers who have a strong preference for learning to swim by being thrown in the sea - the sea might give us life, but we live on our islands. (5/5)
• He is a dandy who can dress sharp as a tack
always in bespoke black suits and white shirts.
People say he is a native of France or Haiti,
of his nationality he says 'Je suis les roi soleil.'
• Go greyhound
press driver press, pedal to the metal to the motor city.
Make up for time lost this day, fifteen minutes, ninety days,
five hundred Babylonian years.
• in hope of finding one or two smooth silver spoons
fallen careless from the mouths of deposed kings,
• I sighted what appeared to be a bonfire
in my garden, for the flame of the forest,
the japanese lanterns and the candlewood
were hot ablaze and the late poinsettia
leapt like flambeaux at the gateway.
I ran downstairs in my nightgown
to investigate this garden arson
and I saw you there, lost in wonder
at my full bloom conflagration.
• The egrets perch upon the trees like birds,
blossoms of birds, or white-feathered flowers.
• the high-heeled shoes, tendrils of suede straps
x-ing across insteps, kissing her long narrow feet.
• The plain terra cotta rounded cooking pot
patterned with my daughter's palm print,
the goblet I glazed with crushed gems, then
sketched on with thorns, will all be broken.
Only the weaver birds, and ants who sip raindrops
from shards, will ever drink again from my pots.
O weaver birds and ants who drink of raindrops
promise you will come as guests to sip of my pots.
This entry was originally posted at http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/597366.html and has
comments Please comment there using OpenID.