The World Will Follow Joy
eBook - ePub

The World Will Follow Joy

Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems)

  1. 192 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

The World Will Follow Joy

Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems)

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Book preview
Table of contents
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About This Book

A poetry collection of "playful and crooning lyricism" from the National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple ( Booklist ). In this dazzling new collection, Alice Walker offers over sixty new poems to incite and nurture contemporary activists. Hailed as a "lavishly gifted writer, " Walker imbues her poetry with evocative images, fresh language, anger, forgiveness, and profound wisdom ( The New York Times ). Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she "distills struggles, crises, and tragedies down to bright, singing lessons in living with awareness and joy" ( Booklist ). By attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows, as ever, her deep compassion, profound spirituality, and necessary political commitments. The poems in The World Will Follow Joy remind us of our human capacity to come together and take action, even in our troubled political times. "Her spirituality, concern for human rights, and almost old-fashioned, determined joyousness run deep and her devoted readers will want to follow her as she turns 'madness into flowers'" ( Library Journal ).

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Information

Publisher
The New Press
Year
2013
ISBN
9781595588876

Turning Madness into Flowers #1

If my sorrow were deeper
I’d be, along with you, under
the ocean’s floor;
but today I learn that the oil
that pools beneath the ocean floor
is essence
residue
remains
of all our
relations
all
our ancestors who have died and turned to oil
without our witness
eons ago.
We’ve always belonged to them.
Speaking for you, hanging, weeping, over the water’s edge
as well as for myself.
It is our grief
heavy, relentless,
trudging
us, however resistant,
to the decaying and rotten
bottom of things:
our grief bringing
us home.
***

What It Feels Like

As if I’ve swallowed
A watermelon
And
Sidestepping
My digestive tract
It has lodged
In my heart.
There it lies
Green
& whole
with a luscious
red
heart of its own
daring me
to cut.
***

Before I Leave the Stage

Before I leave the stage
I will sing the only song
I was meant truly to sing.
It is the song
of I AM.
Yes: I am Me
&
You.
WE ARE.
I love Us with every drop
of our blood
every atom of our cells
our waving particles
—undaunted flags of our Being—
neither here nor there.
***

Remember?

Remember
W...

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. Foreword
  7. What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?
  8. If I Was President (“Were” May Be Substituted by Those Who Prefer It)
  9. From: Poems for My Girls
  10. Don’t Be Like Those Who Ask for Everything
  11. Knowing You Might Someday Come
  12. Turning Madness into Flowers #1
  13. What It Feels Like
  14. Before I Leave the Stage
  15. Remember?
  16. Working Class Hero
  17. The Ways of Water
  18. You Want to Grow Old Like the Carters
  19. The Answer Is: Live Happily!
  20. Word Reaches Us
  21. When You See Water
  22. This Is a Story of How Love Works
  23. Alice and Kwamboka
  24. May It Be Said of Me
  25. And Do You See What They Have Bought with It?
  26. She
  27. Our Martyrs
  28. The Tree of Life Has Fallen
  29. To Change the World Enough
  30. Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
  31. What Do I Get for Getting Old? A Picture Story for the Curious!
  32. Desire
  33. March Births
  34. Two Boys on a Pink Tricycle
  35. Coming to Worship the 1,000-Year-Old Cherry Tree
  36. Listening to Bedouins, Thinking of Bob
  37. Peonies
  38. Black and White Cows
  39. Worms Won’t Need a Menu
  40. From Paradise to Paradise
  41. Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece
  42. Life Takes Its Own Sweet Time
  43. One Meaning of the Immaculate Heart
  44. To Stand Beaming and Clapping
  45. And in That Sacred Time
  46. Why Peace Is Always a Good Idea
  47. Hope
  48. Tranquil
  49. The Raping of Maids
  50. This Human Journey
  51. In This You Are Wrong
  52. Hope to Sin Only in the Service of Waking Up
  53. The Part of God That Stings
  54. 9/11: An Irrelevant Truth
  55. The Buddha’s Disagreeable Relative
  56. We Who Have Survived
  57. Racism Dates Us
  58. The World We Want Is Us
  59. The Joyful News of Your Arrest
  60. Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems
  61. The Foolishness of Captivity
  62. Despair Is the Ground Bounced Back From
  63. Occupying Mumia’s Cell
  64. Another Way to Peace
  65. We Pay a Visit to Those Who Play at Being Dead
  66. Democratic Womanism
  67. Democratic Motherism
  68. After Many Years and Much Silliness
  69. When I Join You
  70. Going Out to the Garden
  71. Notes
  72. Photo Credits