Description
David Mason has characterized Lorna Goodison's work as a "revelation
to me, much of it beautiful for its simple negotiation of the line between
life and art."
One of the most distinguished
contemporary poets of the Caribbean, Goodison draws on both African and
European inheritances in her finely crafted poems, which often carry a
sense of language's healing power in the face of the pain of the past.
She deals thematically with the struggle of Caribbean women and writes
in a fashion that has developed from conversational to more ritualistic.
From reviews of Goodison's
earlier works:
"The evocative power
of Lorna Goodison's poetry derives its urgency and appeal from the heart-and-mind
concerns she has for language, history, racial identity, and gender."
Andrew Salkey -- World Literature Today
"A marvelous poet, one
to savor and to chant aloud."
-- Pat Monaghan, Booklist
About the Author
Lorna Goodison, internationally recognized for her poetry and prose, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, Americas Region, in 1986. She has been a visiting faculty member at the Universities of Toronto and Michigan and a central figure at the Caribbean Poetry Festival of the Poetry Society of America (New York, 1992), the International Poetry Festival, South Bank Centre (London, 1992), and the Interlit International Conference (Erlanger, Germany, 1993). Her poetry and prose have been features, with that of Alice Walker and Maya Angelou, in A Quarter of Poets and A Quartet of Stories. This is her sixth collection.
Reviews
"Goodison advances from strength to strength. Her sixth collection finds her focusing the diamond lens of her incantatory verse on the culture and people of her homeland in the Caribbean and gives us a book full of pieces well worthy of anthologizing... Taken altogether, these poems reinforce each other's many strengths and constitute a long song of struggle and survival, of inhumanity and human love." -- Booklist
Book Information
ISBN 9780252064593
Author Lorna Goodison
Format Paperback
Page Count 88
Imprint University of Illinois Press
Publisher University of Illinois Press
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 13mm