Her Blue Body Everything We Know Walker, Alice

An anthology of poetry shares a keen historical perspective on the spiritual, social, and political issues of the last three decades, in works including "Once" and "Revolutionary Petunias & Other Poems"

Composed, wry, unshaken by adversity, Walker ( The Color Purple ) in her poetry brings a woman's wisdom to bear on love, life's unavoidable tragedies, blacks' struggle for equality and justice, and a globe spinning toward eco-suicide. The collection (including nine previously unpublished selections) moves from early, delicate snapshots of Walker's travels to East Africa ( Once ), through taut, politically charged communiques from the Deep South of the late 1960s and early '70s ( Revolutionary Petunias ) to confessions of spiritual breakdown, followed by an expansive reaching out to the world ( Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful ). Her strong, beautiful voice veers from reverence for the earth to fiery protest over the West's use of the Third World as a dumping-ground for wastes and nuclear tests. Capturing the absurdist predicament of our finite lives ("on the way, maybe--to being daffodils"), these poems beckon us to heal ourselves and the planet.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

If Walker speaks the language of hope in prose, in poetry she may well speak the language of despair. Although she clearly finds poetry redemptive, many of the poems in this 25-year collection are wrenching in their anger and the lapidary nature of their pain. While her voice has moved from earlier, calligraphic images of Africa and life in the South to the more sinuous and elegant line of longer poems written for friends, relatives, and lovers, her themes remain constant. Over the decades, the variegated beauty of black faces and voices, power and its skewed effect on the lives of women, the rich fire of sexual attraction, and a passionate attachment to the earth and its creatures inform and shape her poetry. She is not without a sense of humor both wry and scathing: a "found poem" she built from The New York Review of Books includes the line "She assumes her romance/ with Du Bois/ to be as interesting as any other aspect/ of his career." Or, in her verse to poetry: "Poetry laid back/ and played dead/ until the morning." This comprehensive collection has a few never-before-published poems, including the exquisite hymn to the earth that gives the book its title.
- GraceAnne A. DeCandido, "School Library Journal"
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.