Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
By Alice Walker
4/5
()
About this ebook
Alice Walker, author of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple—“an American novel of permanent importance” (San Francisco Chronicle)—crafts a bilingual collection that is both playfully imaginative and intensely moving.
Presented in both English and Spanish, Alice Walker shares a timely collection of nearly seventy works of passionate and powerful poetry that bears witness to our troubled times, while also chronicling a life well-lived. From poems of painful self-inquiry, to celebrating the simple beauty of baking frittatas, Walker offers us a window into her magical, at times difficult, and liberating world of activism, love, hope and, above all, gratitude. Whether she’s urging us to preserve an urban paradise or behold the delicate necessity of beauty to the spirit, Walker encourages us to honor the divine that lives inside all of us and brings her legendary free verse to the page once again, demonstrating that she remains a revolutionary poet and an inspiration to generations of fans.
Alice Walker
Alice Walker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, is a canonical figure in American letters. She is the author of The Color Purple, The Temple of My Familiar, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart, Now Is the Time to Open Your Heart, and many other works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Her writings have been translated into more than two dozen languages, and more than fifteen million copies of her books have been sold worldwide.
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Reviews for Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart
5 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I really enjoyed the Alice Walker books I read in April for National Poetry Month, so I was excited to find this new collection of poems by the author. The collection contains the English poems and Spanish translations by Manuel Garcia Verdecia. The collection is perhaps focused a bit too much on the ills of society and philosophically aligned further left than my own leanings. While I agree with the author's points of social injustices, I think the way we would address them differs a great deal. I still enjoy the rhythm of the author's poetry. I even read a few of the poems in both languages, mainly to see if I was still able to read and comprehend in Spanish. As far as I can tell, the translator did a very good job--and I was able to comprehend more than expected. I received an advance electronic galley through the publisher via NetGalley with expectations of an honest review.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Such a great collection of poems.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I had the great joy of listening to this read by Alice Walker. I kind of feel like all poetry collections should be turned into audiobooks. As a poet, Walker doesn't play around with language very much or come up with extremely creative ways of putting things, her poetry is very straightforward. It's something I appreciate, but it also makes the poetry feel less like poetry and more like expressed thoughts or short essays. This collection felt like it was about Walker reconciling or dealing with the fact that so many people do so many awful things throughout the world. She deals with it by focusing on the good in the world, she introduces this idea of earthlings vs. others (i.e. true earthlings wouldn't do these awful things), and she assures us goodness will win in the end. I don't really agree with those last two ideas, but I really loved the concept of this project and Walker's execution of it. I'm excited to get a physical copy to read more closely.