Whether you read it as poetry or memoir, this collection will invite you into the delicate balance between the challenging, sometimes squalid, human condition and the beauty and sadness of the transcendent.
A poem doesn’t bring the dead back to life, but a memory has a touch of immortality: it’s a sort of recompense—forever isn’t exactly a lie, even if it’s not completely true.
Luckily for us, Dungy’s increase in empathy and experience coincides with her embrace of the braided essay: her thinking crashes people, places, and ideas against each other in unexpected and adventurous ways.
Howe’s Magdalene is ambitious in its reach and strangely timely, as American society has swung to the right and, in the process, against the tide of equality for women.