Alice Walker’s Hard Times Require Furious Dancing

Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems, with foreword and illustrations by Shiloh McCloud(New World Library 2013)

If I write
poems
just
one
or two
words
to a line,
or at least
no more than four,
you will
know
that every word
has been
weighed
carefully
in my soul

and if I say
things
that are wise
you will
read them slowly
so
they sink in

and if I say
things
that are egocentric
or silly
or banal
or even callous
they may sound measured
and wise

especially
if the book
is decorated
with drawings
of New Age
goddess figures

and editors
who pay
by the line
will give me
more money.

Actually this book isn’t as bad as that. It is, after all, by Alice Walker. ‘I will keep broken things‘ is one to remember, and ‘Sixty-five!’ is a great birthday poem. But I did feel that I was reading a devotional booklet for a New Age religion that I’m not a member of.