Jubilee

By Roxane Beth Johnson

Subjects: American women authors, Women authors, African American women authors, Recollections poetry, American poetry, Poetry, Recollections

Description: <em>Jubilee</em> by Roxane Beth Johnson won the 2005 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. "These luminous poems depict a world I never knew—or know as a child and since forgot—and they do so with the authority of a totally mature voice. The artistry that unifies <em>Jubilee</em> is so perfect it is almost invisible. Altogether an amazing debut . . ." —Philip Levine. "In <em>Jubilee</em>, the effects of gravity are reversed in order to capture how the world weighs on the mind . . . These often deceptively measured prose poems critique not only their own form, but the structures, the foundations, of family, spirituality, and identity which we often fail to examine. Each self-portrait tells us as much about the environment as it reveals about the subject occupying them--the poet creating with a small mirror in one hand, a pen/camera/brush/etching knife in the other. . ." —Kyle G. Dargan.