Turn Thanks: POEMS - Softcover

Lorna Goodison teaches at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She has published six collections of poetry, including To Us All Flowers Are Roses
 

Now teaching at the Univ. of Michigan, this Caribbean-born poet finds comfort in the spirits of her ancestors, whom she conjures in delightful poem after poemthe volume here raises the dead with its Island patois and lilts. Goodison sings rude songs and ribald ditties to commemorate her big, loving family, who worked hard and took pleasure in the food and beauty of their surroundings. A hymn to her dead mother, inspired by Bob Marleys imperative to catch a fire, celebrates the mothers oneness with the earth to which she returns, and a sea chanty hopes that she will breathe easily and ride a wild white horse in the afterlife. Goodisons title refers to the poems giving thanks: to the speakers nanny, a displaced African bush healing woman who gave her charge the gift of her impossible English (Turn Thanks to Miss Mirry); to her grandmother, who found redemption in cleaning the local clergys vestments (Turn Thanks to Grandmother Hannah); and to her aunt Rose, who advises lovers always to keep honey mixed in with their food (Aunt Roses Honey Advice). Other poems introduce Great- grandmother Leanna, who married a stout free Guinea man; Great- grandfather William, who scandalized the village by marrying his maid after his wife died; Uncle, whose childrenmasons, carpenters, seamstressesmake everything for his funeral; and Grandmother, who lost all her land to tiefing [sic] Russell. The best poem of all, Angel of Dreamers, is in the voice of a dreamseller who sets up shop in town despite the cuss-cuss and fight down from other merchants. Except for a few editorial slips (one poem talks about captured collective memory), Goodisons narratives fly by on lovely rhythms and easy beats. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.