Braddy Reads Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth

So I’ve had a lot of setbacks when it comes to my poetry writing recently. I lost my USB drive with all my poetry on it for the second time in two years. Oh, and you couple that with the fact that the poetry section at Barnes and Noble keeps getting moved to smaller and smaller bookshelves (assuming they still have a section dedicated to poetry AT ALL), and my enthusiasm for the art has nearly completely disappeared – despite the fact that I GRADUATED from college in poetry writing.

I hope I never lose my enthusiasm for READING the stuff, though – cuz then I’d miss out on some pretty good poetry. Take, for example, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, by Alice Walker.

There are some fantastic poems in here that revel in simple language and everyday settings. Alice Walker pulls out a lot of themes involving aging and acceptance, and she pulls some pretty fantastic word pairings out.

Seriously, the woman has a line about war not paying attention to frogs, and she calls garlic “cool as nuns.” This, by the way, is Awesome Poetry™.

There are some aspects of Alice Walker’s poetry that I had a bit of trouble wrapping my head around. Ms. Walker dedicates a lot of time talking about the importance of using mushrooms to tap in to the divine. I don’t know that I can really get behind that… but it feels appropriately poetish.

Oh, and she writes a lot about a kind of “divine femininity” that I, as a male reader, have trouble getting behind. I mean, there’s a lot of talk about “divine femininity,” but I never hear anything about a “divine masculinity.”

I bet the divine masculinity just belches a lot.

Anyway, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth – recommended for anyone who happens to like poetry.