Controlling The Silver

by Goodison, Lorna

• ISBN13: 9780252072123
• ISBN10: 025207212X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-12-13
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

Renowned poet Lorna Goodison has written a new collection of elegies and praise songs which explore the close link between history and genealogy in the Caribbean experience. Her subjects range from the economic genius of market women to the complex beauty of the natural world.

Table of Contents

Island Aubade	p. 1
Over the Guinea grass piece	p. 4
Dear cousin	p. 5
Excavating	p. 7
Ode to the watchman	p. 8
Our ancestral dwellings	p. 10
Recalling the fourteen hour drive from Kingston to Lucea, 1953	p. 11
The wandering Jew and the Arab merchant on the Island of Allspice	p. 12
Passing the grace vessels of Calabash	p. 14
So who was the mother of Jamaican art?	p. 15
Jah the Baptist	p. 16
Poison crab	p. 17
Let us now praise famous women	p. 18
Fool-fool rose is leaving labor-in-vain savannah	p. 19
Rainstorm is weeping : an Arawak folk tale revisited	p. 20
Aunt Alberta	p. 21
Aunt Rose	p. 22
The burden bearer	p. 23
Travelling with photographs of our generations flanking St. Christopher on the Dashboard	p. 24
Hosay	p. 25
Creation story : why our island is shaped like a turtle	p. 26
These three butterflies and one bird we interpret as signs	p. 28
The geovangelist	p. 31
Don C and the Goldman posse	p. 33
Back to where we come from	p. 34
O pirates yes they rob I	p. 35
Tombstones	p. 37
Where the flora of our village came from	p. 39
By the light of a Jamaican moon	p. 40
Lessons learned from the royal primer	p. 41
Hirfa of Egypt	p. 42
What of Tuktoo the little Eskimo?	p. 43
Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Pacific, Indian Ocean	p. 44
Louis Galdy of the world's once wickedest city	p. 45
Remittance man	p. 46
Black like this?	p. 47
Pleasant Sunday evenings	p. 48
Passing the empty playground	p. 49
What the witnesses saw when they entered the balm yard	p. 50
This river named by our great-grandfather	p. 51
River Mumma	p. 53
The River Mumma wants out	p. 54
The wisdom of cousin fool-fool rose	p. 55
In the field of broken pots	p. 58
But I may be reborn as Keke	p. 59
At Harmony Hall we buy an Egyptian blue Cecil Baugh mug	p. 60
Change if you must just change slow	p. 61
All the way to Kingston we recall urban legends	p. 62
Whatever became of MaMud?	p. 63
The yard man : an election poem	p. 64
Controlling the silver	p. 65
Old blue nun	p. 69
Making life	p. 70
Your ice art, Michigan	p. 72
Broadview	p. 73
Missing the goat	p. 74
Spirit catcher	p. 75
The crying philosopher and the laughing philosopher	p. 76
All Souls Day	p. 77
Hard food	p. 78
Breadfruit thoughts	p. 79
Rites	p. 80
Carnevale	p. 81
Aunt Ann	p. 83
The liberator speaks	p. 84
Palm roses	p. 86
At the Keswick Museum	p. 87
Bam chi chi la la : London, 1969	p. 89
Half Moon Bay	p. 90
Arriving at the airport once called Idlewild	p. 91
Apollo Double Bill	p. 92
Guernica	p. 94
I buy my son a reed	p. 96
I saw Charles Mingus	p. 97
A simple apology	p. 98
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