Lodestar
| Author: | Warren, Nagueyalti | |
| Year: | 1992 | |
| ISBN: | 0-7734-9573-8 978-0-7734-9573-9 | |
| Price: | $39.95 + shipping | |
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These poems catch transient moments in the African-American experience and hold them up for poetic scrutiny. Capturing both past and present, rural and urban experiences, they spin a gossamer web of memories of youth and old age, creating a voice that is at once ancient and contemporary, African and American.
Reviews
"More than `gossamer web': Lodestar is the salt and sugar of life Nagueyalti Warren knows very well." - Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Laureate of Illinois
"More like Dove than Angelou, Warren draws on childhood memories to convey crisply told narratives about her Mississippi upbringing. Although they often rely on implication and imagistic associations, these are easily accessible poems, making Lodestar a wonderful introduction to fine poetry for younger audiences. . . . Lodestar deserves a place on the shelf with the works of Warren's peers for its vivid descriptions and controlled rhythms." -- MultiCultural Review
". . . joins the ranks of African American women writers admirably engaged in fashioning a fuller and truer image of their contested being-in-the-world. In these highly readable poems of striking visual imagery and with a taut and rhythmic grace, she captures the joys as wells as the griefs of a young black girl's childhood in the South and, in turn, her and her family's encounter with the harsh, bleak streets of the North. It is a contemporary consciousness, swift, forthright and unabashed; her lines resonate with authenticity and often, in their unmediated fix upon reality, achieve eloquence." -Samuel Allen
"More like Dove than Angelou, Warren draws on childhood memories to convey crisply told narratives about her Mississippi upbringing. Although they often rely on implication and imagistic associations, these are easily accessible poems, making Lodestar a wonderful introduction to fine poetry for younger audiences. . . . Lodestar deserves a place on the shelf with the works of Warren's peers for its vivid descriptions and controlled rhythms." -- MultiCultural Review
". . . joins the ranks of African American women writers admirably engaged in fashioning a fuller and truer image of their contested being-in-the-world. In these highly readable poems of striking visual imagery and with a taut and rhythmic grace, she captures the joys as wells as the griefs of a young black girl's childhood in the South and, in turn, her and her family's encounter with the harsh, bleak streets of the North. It is a contemporary consciousness, swift, forthright and unabashed; her lines resonate with authenticity and often, in their unmediated fix upon reality, achieve eloquence." -Samuel Allen