Sometimes you forget what a poem should do, & it
takes a gift to remind you. Thompson possesses such a gift. She tells us,
there is safety in the body. She says, there are homes that are made of
glass. Between those two spaces is the music that drives a world, the sadness
& the tenderness. And then she writes us into Attica, into Beirut,
into Tunisia. She writes us into the ache of motherhood, of regret and
loss. Thompson captures so much of it, & lets it spill forth with a
dignity that dares you to look in the direction it points, and remember
"that the gods get lonely."
--R. Dwayne Betts
Author of A Question of Freedom
and Shahid Reads his own Palm
and is the Program Director for
the D.C. Creative Writing Workshop.
Intimate. Lyrical. Sensual sounds animate this first
collection of poetry by Becky Thompson. Her poems are a landscape of intellect
and beauty. Welcome my dear sister, to this thing called poetry!
--Sonia Sanchez. Sanchez,
Poet, activist, playwright, scholar,
mother of the Black Arts Movement,
and the author of sixteen books.
I give this book of poems--three bows. Thompson writes
about a life filled with hurt. She is a witness for the prosecution. She
is a woman flying away. She is the last witness and the first lover. Sex
is what she kisses before she falls asleep. She is a survivor like many
readers and writers. When she adopts a child, home becomes a place of color.
Thompson comes from a long line of cowbirds. After the pecking comes the
poems. For this we are grateful.
--E. Ethelbert Miller
Director of the African-American Resource Center
at Howard University, author of many books including
How We Sleep on the Nights We Don't Make Love.