Passing Over - Softcover

Baker Jr., Director Houston A

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0916418871 ISBN 13: 9780916418878

Publisher: Lotus Press (MI), 2000

Synopsis

While these poems were born from the rape of the author’s wife, the emphasis is on the successful recovery and healing and a stronger marriage. One of the first poems begins, "You have come back to me." The title itself enforces the positive, taken from a hymn that begins, "The storm is passing over, hallelujah." The book is divided into a number of short sections including a prologue, "The Geography of Loving Again," "Love’s Language Passing," "Promises of Kenning," "Grave Yards," "The House of Life," and the one-poem epilogue, "A North Carolina Poem for Charlotte, 1999." While there are poems that deal with places and other subjects, the book as a whole can be considered a series of tender, mature love poems.

While this book is one that the author felt compelled to write for personal reasons, it is of extreme importance to others in a society where rape has become a common crime and one from which too many of the victims never fully recover. This experience, related in lyrical beauty and tenderness, offers hope for those who have heretofore felt that there can be no possibility for healing.

This is indeed a book of beauty, inspiration, and, as one reviewer stated, "a gift, both to the specific person to whom it is tenderly offered and to all of us readers who need or will need its heroic spirit and soothing balm."

About this title

About the Author:

Houston A. Baker, Jr., Ph.D. is one of the foremost scholars and critics in African American literary and cultural studies. He was the first African American to serve as president of the Modern Language Association. In addition to his scholarly books and articles, he is author of three other books of poetry, No Matter Where You Travel, You Still Be Black, Spirit Run, and Blues Journeys Home (all Lotus Press). Dr. Baker has taught at Yale University, the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke University. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor in the English Department of Vanderbilt University.

About this edition

• Publisher: Lotus Press (MI)
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0916418871
• ISBN 13: 9780916418878
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 47