NONFICTION

Lighting the Shadow

by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Four Way. Apr. 2015. 136p. ISBN 9781935536574. pap. $15.95. POETRY
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Griffiths, whose intensive Mule & Pear won the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, here tracks a woman's journey through trauma, both personal and larger. There's an almost shrieking sense of loss and pain ("spine broken into bone silence"), which Griffiths manages to sustain even as it rattles the reader. And what finally sustains, however bitingly, is memory: "My memory/ was a painted mast, filled/ with the inviolate breath/ of what history can/ blow apart." Not just for African American poetry collections.
Reviewed by Barbara Hoffert , Apr 15, 2015
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