Gathering the Tribes (Yale Series of Younger Poets)

There is a richness to the poems in this first volume of poems written by Carolyn Forche - words lovingly woven into images and sounds that feel good in your mouth if read aloud. You simply want to taste them, bite into them, savouring their flavour and swallow, feeling them become you. Themes of ethnicity, of friends,lovers, family have underlying themes of displacement and the gathering together of the tribes. It is an important title - Gathering the Tribes - since it has a oneness without surrendering the individuality of one's ethnic group nor self. Very highly recommended.