The God of Indeterminacy: Poems

by Sandra McPherson

Overview

 
       "I count Sandra McPherson as one of the dozen or so truly outstanding
        American poets who write brilliantly in the Romantic tradition. . . .
        The God of Indeterminacy brings together a group of exciting poems
        showing the vital influence of her interest in the blues tradition and
        in African-American quiltmaking. They are brilliant testimonials to this
        fruitful wedding of the musical, the visual, and the literary."
        -- Clarance Major
     
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252062711
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	02/28/1993
Pages:	104
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.30(d)

Editorial Reviews

McPherson ( Streamers ) turns to the American heartland as material for her 10th collection, and ably transforms the cliches of American rural and black folklore into original imagery. She establishes her concerns early on, juxtaposing the voices of women who make quilts with the voices of men who sing the blues. The men who mention their own names in their songs (``So that the vibrations of your sung name / are distinguished from anyone's / stone-cold name in the rain'') are contrasted with women whose endeavors are anonymous. Or, as a country preacher puts it: ``daughters and nieces / leaving home were saved in patchwork pieces.'' McPherson's attention to detail--the designs of the quilt squares (``tulips, thirty-one, / red, fawn-nectarine, / rimmed by a guardrail / as pink as medicine / in spoons''), the lonesome refrains of the blues--is so precise that, despite similar subject matter, the voice of each poem retains its individuality. But there is a third, entirely different commentator lending necessary emotional weight throughout this book: an exasperated woman whose children have failed her and who therefore feels she's failed herself, who wishes she can literally put her homeless daughter into the birdhouse. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly