Gathering the Tribes

An examination of kinship and uprootedness, Gathering the Tribes is the first volume of poetry by Carolyn Forch and the 71st volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets The poems in Gathering the Tribes recount experiences from the authors adolescence and youngadult life, closely bound to the natural cycles of the seasons, of generations, of the bodys functioning. Many deal with uprootednesshasty emigrations from Czechoslovakia and Kiev, the loss of grandparents and other elders, people leaving and being sent away. But this poetry is not a sentimental celebration of the goodness of nature and harmony with the world is never something assumed. The harmony Forch seeks goes deeper than simple submission to natural processes or identification with an ethnic group, and it must be fought for with a tenuous faith. The balance that must be found between the ugliness, the harshness of her historyboth natural and socialand its intense beauty, is what distinguishes Forchs poetry and gives it its depth and dimension.