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lsparrow's review against another edition
2.0
I found myself wanting to enjoy this poetry - I loved the words and the themes but somehow I couldn't stay connected.
I really love the author's prose but I found the style of poetry felt too wordy.
I really love the author's prose but I found the style of poetry felt too wordy.
pumbly's review
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.75
jd_brubaker's review against another edition
4.0
The first book of Dionne Brand's I ever read was The Blue Clerk. It was a recommended reading for one of the residencies of my M.F.A. program. I read the excerpts that were listed for the residency, and then after the residency ended I went back and reread the whole book because it was an outstanding piece of literary creativity. When I found out Brand was also a prolific poet, I knew I had to start reading her work.
Land to Light On, like many books of poetry, is a conversation about the self in relation to the past. In particular, the horrifically racist past of slavery in the United States, and how that past is still negatively impacting Black people today. Some of the poems feel to almost be written be different speakers, as if the writer herself is channeling the words and lives and experiences of her ancestors and giving them a place to breathe. "The doorway cannot bell a sound, cannot repeat / what is outside. My eyes is not a mirror" (pg 3). "My mouth could not find a language / I find myself instead, useless as that" (pg 5). These poems, these lines are fused with a history that builds an agonizing tension between the reader and the work, as though we are being given a very real gift of seeing into the past and hearing the pain of souls crushed, dominated, and erased.
But there is also a sense of urgency in this book, a sense of the present continuing to point both backward to the past and forward to the potential future. Each poem, each voice that sounds reminiscent of history, also feels full of the primary speaker's experience. At times, the poems feel to include both present and past simultaneously, and in that way the speaker almost becomes her ancestors, blending together with her own life, views, and pain. "I have to think again what it means that I am here, / what it means that this, harsh as it is and without / a name, can swallow me up" (pg 9). "She is a translator of languages / and souls" (pg 29). "She is a translator of bureaucracies. This race passes through / her, ledgers and columns of thirst, notebooks of bitter / feeling" (pg 29). The only way I can really describe this book is a form of prophecy. The speaker is accessing something both within her and outside of her, something sacred and divine that she has been entrusted with, and that she's now entrusting the reader with.
And isn't that the ultimate point of all writing? Taking something sacred, something magical, and entrusting it to the reader? It's up to us to be worthy of that privilege.
Land to Light On, like many books of poetry, is a conversation about the self in relation to the past. In particular, the horrifically racist past of slavery in the United States, and how that past is still negatively impacting Black people today. Some of the poems feel to almost be written be different speakers, as if the writer herself is channeling the words and lives and experiences of her ancestors and giving them a place to breathe. "The doorway cannot bell a sound, cannot repeat / what is outside. My eyes is not a mirror" (pg 3). "My mouth could not find a language / I find myself instead, useless as that" (pg 5). These poems, these lines are fused with a history that builds an agonizing tension between the reader and the work, as though we are being given a very real gift of seeing into the past and hearing the pain of souls crushed, dominated, and erased.
But there is also a sense of urgency in this book, a sense of the present continuing to point both backward to the past and forward to the potential future. Each poem, each voice that sounds reminiscent of history, also feels full of the primary speaker's experience. At times, the poems feel to include both present and past simultaneously, and in that way the speaker almost becomes her ancestors, blending together with her own life, views, and pain. "I have to think again what it means that I am here, / what it means that this, harsh as it is and without / a name, can swallow me up" (pg 9). "She is a translator of languages / and souls" (pg 29). "She is a translator of bureaucracies. This race passes through / her, ledgers and columns of thirst, notebooks of bitter / feeling" (pg 29). The only way I can really describe this book is a form of prophecy. The speaker is accessing something both within her and outside of her, something sacred and divine that she has been entrusted with, and that she's now entrusting the reader with.
And isn't that the ultimate point of all writing? Taking something sacred, something magical, and entrusting it to the reader? It's up to us to be worthy of that privilege.
jayme's review
5.0
I love the things Brand does with language in these poems. The style can change drastically from poem to poem. It often has a stream of consciousness feel to it. And all of them evoked really strong imagery for me. Definitely a collection I will want to return to.
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