Breaklight: The Poetry of the Caribbean

by Andrew Salkey

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies

267 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1972

Reviews

[kenneth]

Though ultimately using a colloquial tone, these poets elevate the common language to extraordinary heights. The anthology has a good mixture of themes with poems on subjects such as the slave trade, Che Guevara, love, contemplation of mortality, and the relation of the poet to the geographic world he inhabits. The personal poems in this collection do not exhibit the common confessional tropes of Americans during this time period, and many of the poets have a unique approach to the personal lyric. A few of the poems are in the magical realist genre, which I admire. The poets in the anthology comprise an array of voices, and nearly all of the poems in the anthology are worth reading.