Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems - Softcover

Alice Walker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608681882 ISBN 13: 9781608681884

Publisher: New World Library, 2013

Synopsis

Alice Walker is known throughout the world as not only a great writer but an activist and a woman who shares the inner turmoil and outer struggles of her life. Readers admire her ability to bare her heart and soul, but to also speak out about the world as she sees it, often becoming a catalyst for change. This book came about when Walker started a website and blog and wanted to provide poetry suitable for challenging times. As the title suggests, these poems were written during struggles and sadness and deal with the loss of siblings, the loss of a beloved dog, the estrangement in families, violence and struggles on the world stage, and the simple joy of life itself. The words dance, they sing, they heal our hearts and touch our souls. As Shiloh McCloud writes in the foreword: "Alice Walker's latest collection of poems was conceived over the course of one year. Her journey includes the death of loved ones and the birth of new ideas, the sorrow of rejection and the deliciousness of love, the sweetness of home, familial abandonment and what it means to belong to the greater world family. We are witness to the characteristic self-confidence that so profoundly distinguishes Alice's work -- her ability to take that which is heart wrenchingly sad, share the guts of that sadness, and then, through a tapestry of richly colored words, weave a resolution that leaves the poem with a way to "be" about that sorrow, not drowned under it. She does not leave the poem or the reader in distress, but soothes the aching heart of the matter with true poetry."

About this title

Product Description:

Alice Walker sums up the premise and purpose for this year of poems in her Preface: I was born into a family of eight siblings. I am the youngest. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human condition, especially in these times of war, poverty, environmental devastation, and greed that is quite beyond the most creative imagination. Sometimes it all feels a bit too much to bear....I have learned to dance. Alice Walker is beloved for her ability to speak her own truth in ways that speak for and about countless others. Here she confronts personal and collective challenges in words that dance, sing, and heal. Readers of these remarkable poems will find comfort and camaraderie and get a joy-filled dancing lesson.

Review:

"[These poems] grow as naturally on the page as grass and flowers, yet never try to conceal a terrain of early graves, emotional land mines, and levies of sorrow."
-- Gloria Steinem

"A lifeboat in a storm, warm soup in the mouth, a rhumba in the streets of the heart."
-- Jack Kornfield

"These are powerful anthems of womanhood and age, although just as likely to be empowering to men and to the not-yet-old."
-- Booklist

"Walker's many fans won't be disappointed by this book."
-- Publishers Weekly

"The poems sing of joy and pain, loss and grief, love and transformation, with results that are redemptive....Highly recommended for all readers of contemporary poetry and for anyone interested in African American literature."
-- Library Journal

"Her poems are intimate and moving, and, like the deepest of heart-to-heart conversations with one who knows us well, they touch the places that hurt, acknowledge the pain, and shine healing light on it."
-- Spirituality & Health

About this edition

• Publisher: New World Library
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1608681882
• ISBN 13: 9781608681884
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184