The Body of the World by Mary Moore Easter
… poetry that surges and snaps with energetic language, strong currents of emotion, and clear-eyed observation.… riveting … Easter is wickedly sly as a feminist.… Like Lucille Clifton, she also celebrates the self, the voice in one of her poem insisting: … I got the road / wide open in me.
The Body of the World releases its poetic power in narratives, lyrical free verse, persona poems, an ode, and a crowning centerpiece of 15 sequenced sonnets that … meditate on art’s capacity to embody and to entomb, and on human aggression coupled with the enduring desire for justice and peace.
—Margaret Hasse, poet, Between Us
The Body of the World astonishes, guides through history, lucid, vivid, artfully, powerfully rendered. Her artistry dares. She leads us through the tangled past, and bristling present of race, slavery, gender and cruelty, through China, France, and America. Easter offers beauty, breath and hope. She will leave you wiser—O, so much wiser.
—Angela Jackson
I love the righteous indignation of the poems … matched only by their striking formal dexterity.… Easter’s gaze is wide and far-reaching as she threads together narratives of black women throughout history … with her own story, focusing attention on the intersection of race and gender, on the ongoing struggle against violence & discrimination..
—Shara McCallum, poet, Madwoman; judge for Prairie Schooner Book Prize
The Body of the World is a full-body missive, a reckoning.… In this volume, Easter addresses her burgeoning body, as well as the world’s body.… She addresses slights and offenses––she dances, leaving no proverbial stone unturned.
In her trek, she outlines her personal and familial lineage, giving readers a better understanding of how she has evolved and gained tools to battle racial wrongs with fiery grace. With her particular stance and strut, Easter marks this weighted terrain. We follow. We bear witness, as she uplifts and reckons.… As Easter stretches and widens her reach, she expands the margins––she bids us, in these upending times––to do the same.
— Glenis Redmond, author of What My Hand Say
