Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

"Love, if it is love, never goes away./ It is embedded in us,/ like seams of gold in the Earth,/ waiting for light,/ waiting to be struck." As we can see, in the veins of Walker's poems optimism runs as deeply, as surely, as those seams of gold. Much like her earlier work (e.g., Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth), most of these sparse, lyrical poems are written in short, one- or two-word lines, quick and halting at once, every thought emphasized, resonating. The poems sing of joy and pain, loss and grief, love and transformation, with results that are redemptive. They address family turmoil and the violence and struggles of the outside world, working to unknot the inner tensions that those issues would engender: "This we know:/ We were/ not meant/ to suffer/ so much,/ & to learn/ nothing." There is much to be learned in confrontation, and Walker's poems bring us with her to resolution and, often enough, to a serene place. As she reminds us in her preface: "Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is the proof."