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aliciaprettybrowneyereader's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
In this poetry collection, the writer gives 3 definitions of the word, rookery: 1) a colony of rooks 2) a breeding place 3) a crowded tenement house. These definitions are the titles of the 3 sections in which the collection is divided.
The poems contained within this collection are very interesting. Many of the poems in the first section contain the word, aubade in their title. I was not familiar with this word. It means a morning love song/poem. This is a great use of irony because most of those poems are tragic and disturbing. Not love song material.
Other poems in the collection use nature imagery – butterflies, bats, frogs, turtles and other species. Religious imagery is also used in many of the poems via angels and biblical passages.
My favorite poems of the collection are historical. The poem writes a moving poem about the 1911 Triangle Waist Shirt Factory fire that killed 146 people in New York. She also pens a poem about Margaret Garner, an escaped enslaved woman who killed her daughter to prevent her return to slavery. Garner’s story was the inspiration of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved.
I enjoyed this collection and have read through it several times.
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