Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth: New Poems by Alice Walker

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"All of my poems," Alice Walker once noted, "are written when I have successfully pulled myself out of a completely numbing despair, and stand again in the sunlight. Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before." In Absolute Trust in the Goodness of Earth, her first full-length book of poetry in a decade, the author of The Color Purple celebrates our planet and its flawed inhabitants.

From the Publisher

In this exquisite book, Alice Walker’s first new collection of poetry since 1991, are poems that reaffirm her as “one of the best American writers of today” (The Washington Post). The forces of nature and the strength of the human spirit inspire the poems in Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth. Alice Walker opens us to feeling and understanding, with poems that cover a broad spectrum of emotions. With profound artistry, Walker searches for, discovers, and declares the
fundamental beauty of existence, as she explores what it means to experience life fully, to learn from it, and to grow both as an individual and as part of a greater spiritual community.

About Walker’s Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, America said, “In the tradition of Whitman, Walker sings, celebrates and agonizes over the ordinary vicissitudes that link and separate all of humankind,” and the same can be said about this astonishing new collection, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth.

Book Magazine

In the preface to this disappointing poetry collection, the author of the wonderful, Pulitzer Prize–winning The Color Purple writes that her response to 9/11 was, you guessed it, to write poems. "This was something of a surprise," Walker adds, "since I had spent the past couple of years telling my friends I would probably not be writing anymore. What will you do instead? one of them asked. I would like to become a wandering inspiration, I replied." The book combines tiresome aphorisms and platitudes with a few refrigerator-magnet poems and banal notes-to-self, like: "Beloved / You must learn / To walk alone / To hold / The precious / Silence / To bring home / And keep the precious / Little / That is left / Of yourself." If you can stand the uninspired musings and pseudo-shaman pomposity, then read away.

Publishers Weekly

"You/ are/ the sister/ The big/ Sister/ As hero," Alice Walker writes near the beginning of her sixth volume of poems: "The one who sees/ The one who listens/ The one who guides/ Teaches/ & protects." Some of Walker's fans may feel this way about the author herself, whose decades of literary production and political activism include several bestselling novels, one Pulitzer for The Color Purple, influential essays about social change (most recently, Sent by Earth) and other much-acknowledged work in gender studies and African-American letters. Walker's poems have long been her warmest, least artful utterances, invoking the solidarity and the compassion she invites her readers to feel: this thick book of short-lined poems extends those goals, exploring and praising friendship, romantic love, home cooking, the peace movement, ancestors, ethnic diversity and particularly admirable strong women, among them the primatologist Jane Goodall. Some poems address topics of recent vintage, such as post-9/11 discrimination ("If you/ Want to show/ Your love/ For America// Smile/ When you see/ His/ Turban/ Rosepink"). Other work continues Walker's longer-term spiritual and ecological interests: the poet (who subtitled her 1990 collection Earthling Poems) now writes "Divine Mother/ Keep on praying/ For us/ All Earthlings/ All children/ Of this awesome place/ Not one of us/ Knowing/ Why we're here/ Except to Be." Though critics' interest in Walker will continue to concentrate on her prose, the readers across the country who cherished Walker's earlier poems will find in this new work exactly what they've awaited. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

"I was so/ Puzzled/ By/ The Attacks./ It was as if/ They believed/ We were/ In a race/ To succeed/ &/ Someone/ Other/ Than/ Death/ Was at/ The/ Finish/ Line." In the preface to her new collection, Walker speaks of the deep sadness and incredible weariness she felt following September 11. After saying that she would probably never write again, she began each day by working on poems at her home on the Pacific coast of Mexico. She told her friends that she hoped to become a "wandering inspiration," and in this, her sixth volume of poems, she proves to be just that. Each poem consists of short lines, sometimes simply a word or two, that are all centered. A group called "Refrigerator Poems," which hovers somewhere between song and prayer, was composed while Walker was visiting a friend who had magnetic poetry tiles. Sometimes there is a real edge to Walker's poems: "Thousands of feet/ Below you/ There is a small/ Boy/ Running from/ your bombs./ If he were/ To show up/ At your mother's/house.../ He'd be invited in/ For dinner." But more often than not, the tone is more uplifting: "Though not/ A contest/ Life/ Is/ The award/ & we/ Have/ Won." For contemporary poetry and African American literature collections.-Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia

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