Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems

Lorna Goodison was born in Jamaica, and has won numerous awards for her writing in both poetry and prose, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Musgrave Gold Medal from Jamaica, the Henry Russel Award for Exceptional Creative Work from the University of Michigan, and one of Canada’s largest literary prizes, the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction for From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People (2007). Her work has been included in the major anthologies and collections of contemporary poetry over the past twenty-five years, such as the Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, the HarperCollins World Reader, the Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, and Longman Masters of British Literature. Along with her award winning memoir, she has published three collections of short stories (including By Love Possessed, 2011) and nine collections of poetry.Her work has been translated into many languages, and she has been a central figure at literary festivals throughout the world. Lorna Goodison teaches at the University of Michigan, where she is the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies.Lorna Goodison was appointed PoetLaureate of Jamaica on 17 May 2017 and will serve until 2020.

• New PoemsBalmI Come From a LandOn Leaving Goldengrove: A letter and seven notes...Fall Away Iron FilingsWhere I Come FromIn Dreams of ShipwreckThe Selfishness of SalmonNaming of FlowersTo the Buddha Go the RosesGates of Ivory, Gates of HornThe Lion and the Gypsy RevisitedSilence Before SpeechYet Once More I Will ShakeRock of AgesThe Cruel RoomWhat Happened to PeterGiovanni PauloAbraham and Isaac AfterA Praise Song to Mandiba and the Camphor Trees of VergelegenWindrush Sankeyfrom Travelling MerciesSpending the Gold of LoversTravelling MerciesWhat We Carried That Carried UsThe Living Converter Woman of Green IslandNever ExpectBookWas It Legba She Met Outside the Coronation Market?Moonlight CityRun GreyhoundBrunette LatiniTo the heirs of low bequests to harvest and glean...For Love of Marpessa DawnMiles in BerlinThe Garden of St. Michael in the Sevel-Hilled City of BambergI am weary of all winters motherInvitations From HeathcliffPoor Mrs. LotNatal SongOver the Island of SaltSong of the ScapegoatShining OneTo Absorb the GreenMedicine Bundle of a Blackfoot WomanHer body became a containter for starsStudio I: Brother Everald BrownStudio II: Seymour L.Studio III: Petrona MorrisonStudio IV: Barrington WatsonCézanne After Émile ZolaPrises in Papine MarketCrossover GriotPetition to the MagdalenIron ShirtMy Island Like a Swimming TurtleQuestions for Marcus Mosiah GarveyLushBam Chi Chi Lalafrom Controlling the SilverIsland AubadeDear CousinExcavatingOde to the WatchmanOur Ancestral DwellingsThe Wandering Jew and the Arab Merchant on the Island of AllspicePassing the Grace Vessels of CalabashSo Who Was the Mother of Jamaican Art?Jah the BaptistPoison CrabFool-Fool Rose is Leaving Labor-in-Vain SavannahRainstorm is Weeping: An Arawak Folk Tale RevisitedAunt AlbertaAunt RoseThe Burden BearerHosayCreation Story: Why Our Island is Shaped Like a TurtleThese Three Butterflies and One Bird We Interpret as SignsDon C and the Goldman PosseWhere the Flora of Our Village Came FromBy the Light of a Jamaican MoonLessons Learned from the Royal PrimerHirfa of EgyptWhat of Tuktoo the Little Eskimo?Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian OceanLouis Galdy of the World's Once Wickedest CityBlack Like This?River MummaThe Wisdom of Cousin Fool-Fool RoseIn the Field of Broken PotsBut I May Be Reborn as KekeChange If You Must Just Change SlowThe Yard Man: An Election PoemControlling the SilverMaking LifeYour Ice Art, MichiganBroadviewMissing the GoatThe Crying Philosopher and the Laughing PhilosopherHard FoodRitesAunt AnnThe Liberator SpeaksAt the Keswick MuseumBam Chi Chi La La: London, 1969Apollo Double BillGuernicaI Buy My Son a ReedI Saw Charles Mingus

Nicholas Laughlin, The Caribbean Review of BooksLorna Goodison's latest volume of poetry combines selections from her previous two collections, Travelling Mercies (2001) and Controlling the Silver (2005; reviewed by Edward Baugh in the February 2000 CRB), with twenty new poems. The poems in Goldengrove are full of flowers, dreams, names, songs, and relics of a Jamaica that only recently passed into memory. These poems are also, in a sense, full of poems.Where I come from,old women bind living wordsacross their flat chests,inscrible them on their foreheads,and in the palms of their hands.The binding of 'living words' recurs in these pages. Readers who 'have the eye' will see that, like the old women of 'Where I Come From', Goodison weaves powerful charms, sometimes for safe passage through life (or death), or to hold and keep, or to soothe.Goodison's poems often celebrate that act of creation, in many forms and guises. Essie the dressmaker in 'I Come From a Land' can 'sew to fit all sizes'. The chemist in 'Balm' blends his magic oils for the aid of the lovestruck. Even migration, in 'Windrush Sankey', is defiantly creative. And in the sequence 'On Leaving Goldengrove', inspired by a nineteenth-century narrative, the unnamed narrator describes his apprenticeship to a 'master of five trades' named Cassamere, who, in a kind of artistic alchemy, uses his practical skills -...this one man is a restorer and scenepainter, fireworks maker, liquor blender,a baker confectioner, besides beingKingston city's tip top dancing master- to astonish, inspire, and illuminate the people around him. The climax of his achievements is a fireworks show that pours light down upon the citizenry:That night Kingstonians went home to tenements,lay down to sleep, and the ancestors dreamed them,blessed and assured them, that what they had seenwas but a glimpse of the paradise waiting for them.Derek Walcott asks, 'What is the rare quality that has gone out of poetry that these marvellous poems restore? Joy.' Goodison's poems offer also what is even more rare: grace.