I confess I've been postponing this post, because how can I do justice to Wendy Donawas magnificent collection Thin Air of the Kmowable? Every day for a month I savoured three poems, a slow, careful read to miss none of the nuances of language, the powerful insights, the beautiful ideas. For me they had the feel of reading a suspense novel - what will she say next? What language will she use? What will the poems teach me that I haven’t thought about before?
As a historian and curator who lived in Barbados for many years, Wendy brings a long view of history and culture. She presents with compassion the bones of slave children, hunter-gatherers who see colonizer for the first time, the remains of history in our landscape.
Wendy also writes beautiful poems about daily life, and presents my favourite line in a poem when she urges us to send our archive of suffering to the shredder, very good advice.
I gasped in wonder at her description of shopping with an Eritrean woman who had a different response to the silliness of Halloween, that ripped the veil keeping her dead at safe distance.
Quotidian objects and experiences achieve depth as in an old trowel lost in a compost heap that Proust-
I could write an entire book about this collection and I highly recommend it for all readers.
An amazing book, an amazing and insightful blog post. Honored to know both Joy and Wendy.
ReplyDeleteThank you for telling me, in your beautiful insightful language, about this book. I ordered it through the library and am in awe. I too am limiting myself to a few poems each read, to savour them and let them sit.
ReplyDelete