Caribbean Passion

by Palmer Adisa, Opal

• ISBN13: 9781900715928
• ISBN10: 1900715929
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd.

Summary

This feisty, sensuous, and thought-provoking collection of poetry from Opal Palmer Adisa includes powerful poems about the solidarity of women, the female elders of the poet's own family, and the desire for male difference—including the benefits of having a younger lover. In these poems there is no gap between the historical, the political, and the personal, all are defined by the presence or absence of the freedom to enjoy the fruits of life. Whether writing about history, family, black lives, love, or sexual passion, Opal Palmer Adisa has an acute eye for the contraries of experience. A number of poems exhibit a witty dance between food and sexuality—in one poem drinking coconut water becomes a sexual act, while in another, the male body is eroticized metaphorically in terms of a coconut palm. But within this focus on the physical, there is also a keen sense of the oppression of the female body. In her poem “Bumbu Clat,” for example, she explores the deformation of a word that originally signified sisterhood to become part of the most misogynist curses in Jamaican society.

Author Biography

Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaica-born, award-winning poet, educator, and storyteller. She is the author of It Begins With Tears and Tamarind and Mango Women, the 1992 American Book Award winner. She is also the chair of the ethnic studies/cultural diversity program at the California College of Arts and Crafts.

Table of Contents

An Arawak speaks	p. 7
Tide turn	p. 8
1865 Bruk-up	p. 9
History	p. 11
Indigenous	p. 12
Run-away bay	p. 15
Milk-river	p. 17
Discovery bay	p. 18
Hope gardens	p. 20
Justice	p. 22
Living	p. 23
Jerk	p. 24
Molasses	p. 25
Peanut	p. 26
Lime	p. 27
Poinsettia	p. 28
Ackee	p. 29
Poui	p. 30
Star-apple	p. 31
Asham	p. 32
Caribbean passion	p. 35
Oleander	p. 36
This poem is an invitation	p. 37
Bamboo fingers	p. 38
Coconut man	p. 39
Stinking toe	p. 40
Naseberry	p. 41
Coconut	p. 42
Bahian man	p. 43
No word for this	p. 45
Childhood landscapes	p. 46
Home	p. 47
Freedom	p. 48
Sisters in misery and womanism	p. 49
Binding ties	p. 52
Love in my limbs	p. 53
I am who I am	p. 54
Call me female	p. 56
Stories that shape me	p. 59
My mother to her mother	p. 61
Legacy	p. 64
Nannie	p. 66
Nannie II	p. 68
A measure of age	p. 69
She travelling	p. 70
What's in a name ask Maroon nannie	p. 72
Maroon nannie knows de name	p. 73
Liquid blue trellis	p. 74
Moda young gal	p. 75
Bumbu clat	p. 78
Banda	p. 80
Sky-juice	p. 82
Nuh glory in Povati	p. 85
Boat people	p. 87
Those who didn't make it	p. 91
Summer rains	p. 94
Head in idea	p. 97
Spanish town	p. 99
Fi me people	p. 101
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.