To Us, All Flowers Are Roses: POEMS (Illinois Poetry (Paperback)) - Softcover

Goodison, Lorna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252064593 ISBN 13: 9780252064593

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 1995

Synopsis

Writing in The Hudson Review,
        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 this title

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.
 

From the Back Cover

Goodison's is an original voice in contemporary poetry, drawing on both African and European inheritances and reminding us that African heritages in the New World are not exclusively those of Americans, and that their Caribbean expression is a significantly different and relatively little known part of the African American experience. Her finely crafted poems often carry a sense of language's healing power in the face of the pain of the past.

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. For example, "Mother, the Great Stones Got to Move," a fierce call for history to be rectified made by the voices of the poor, demanding the "half that has never been told . . . our side of the story, exact figures, / headcounts, burial artifacts, documents, lists, maps / showing our way up through the stars." For example, the marvelous botanical catalog from which the book takes its name. For example, the narrative of Annie Pengelly, used by her mistress as a foot-warmer, for which circumstance "history owes Annie / thousands of nights / of sleep upon a feather bed. / Soft feathers from the breast of / a free, soaring bird." Taken altogether, these poems reinforce each other's many strengths and constitute a long song of struggle and survival, of inhumanity and human love. Patricia Monaghan

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0252064593
• ISBN 13: 9780252064593
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 88