by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
Northwestern University Press, 2017
Paper: 978-0-8101-3514-7 | eISBN: 978-0-8101-3515-4
Library of Congress Classification PS3602.O9275A77 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6

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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Finalist, 2018 Paterson Poetry Prize 

ARRIVAL is a poetic love story between mother and daughter. The poems are road maps, intertwining generations with a narrative beginning in 1950 with a woman who is pregnant with twins. In her seventh month she delivers a stillborn boy and a baby girl weighing less than two pounds. From there, the evocation of a series of catastrophic family events brings forth Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s power to strip her readers down to their most vulnerable. Boyce-Taylor is steeped in the narratives of Trinidad and New York City, colored with metaphorical stew-pot images. She revels in her lyrical range as she weaves these poetic retellings of family, place, and identity.