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ARRIVAL: Poems
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.
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.
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 20, 2018
You know it's a phenomenal book of poetry when you stop and think "holy shit this person really KNOWS how to write." Beautifully crafted and emotionally wrenching, all with intention. Definitely cried in public while reading some of these poems.
February 26, 2019
Arrival was absolutely beautiful.
Boyce-Taylor tells us these stories of her childhood in Trinidad with language so musical it feels like a song. The poetry pulls you in until you feel like you're there alongside the poet. She shares heartbreaking personal histories and moves through them with her poetry. It's lovely and profound.
It makes sense that Boyce-Taylor's poetry feels so lyrical and that her son was a poet/rapper. So glad Hanif Abdurraqib's Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest inspired me to read this book.
Boyce-Taylor tells us these stories of her childhood in Trinidad with language so musical it feels like a song. The poetry pulls you in until you feel like you're there alongside the poet. She shares heartbreaking personal histories and moves through them with her poetry. It's lovely and profound.
It makes sense that Boyce-Taylor's poetry feels so lyrical and that her son was a poet/rapper. So glad Hanif Abdurraqib's Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest inspired me to read this book.
January 31, 2018
Favorites:
"Poodles and Sour Cream" - her mother's job as a domestic
"Roy" - her father
what holds me is this mystic doorway of words
and the rich hum of my mother's voice in the living room of these poems
- "Zuihitsu on Eating Poems"
give the dead back their beauty
let their eyes return like agates
let their noise in this room be poems
be topaz
be blue iris
a cup of hibiscus tea
- "Hush the Call of Names"
"Poodles and Sour Cream" - her mother's job as a domestic
"Roy" - her father
what holds me is this mystic doorway of words
and the rich hum of my mother's voice in the living room of these poems
- "Zuihitsu on Eating Poems"
give the dead back their beauty
let their eyes return like agates
let their noise in this room be poems
be topaz
be blue iris
a cup of hibiscus tea
- "Hush the Call of Names"
December 21, 2018
I loved this poetry, I'm smiling thinking about the emotional journey I took by reading ARRIVAL.
August 13, 2021
It was decent I see where phife got his creativity from.
September 7, 2023
A collection of poems about the poet's childhood in Trinidad, growing up in NY, the distance between mother and daughter, becoming a mother, and loss and love.
from Zuihitsu on Eating Poems: "I eat poems for breakfast / sprinkle some of my honeydew melon / on my Inca red quinoa / I feed poems to my son he eats them / like heirloom tomatoes"
from Moonflower: "I am my father's daughter restless / with no August breeze I become a borrowed day"
from Zuihitsu on Eating Poems: "I eat poems for breakfast / sprinkle some of my honeydew melon / on my Inca red quinoa / I feed poems to my son he eats them / like heirloom tomatoes"
from Moonflower: "I am my father's daughter restless / with no August breeze I become a borrowed day"
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews