Review by Library Journal ReviewĬlifton's poems owe a great deal to oral tradition. Donna Seaman From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. There is strength in these spare yet musical poems, and faith in the power of expression. Clifton is valiant and curious, saddened but seasoned. She ponders mysteries both immediate and theological, including cancer's voraciousness, banishment from the Garden of Eden, and Lazarus' return to the land of the living, and she approaches them with pleasing matter-of-factness. Clifton writes about children killing children, a father abusing a daughter, white men killing black men, and other confounding forms of madness. New poems set this powerful volume in motion, and just like her much-praised earlier work, they address the tragic and the inexplicable. Clifton's poems are lean, agile, and accurate, and there is beauty in their directness and efficiency, an element, too, of surprise. Birds and foxes appear in Clifton's poems, and it's easy to see why their quicksilver energy and grace, their bright knowingness and oneness with the earth, appeal to her: when she puts pen to paper, she is their sister.
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