Zion Roses

In Zion Roses, her second collection, Monica Minott’s poems grasp the reader’s attention with a voice that is distinctively personal, both taut and musical—and tender and muscular when the occasion demands. Her language moves seamlessly and always appropriately between standard and Jamaican patwa, a reflection of a vision that encompasses a Black modernity still very much in touch with its aphoristic folk roots, where the ancestral meets Skype or a Jonkonnu band is stuck in a Kingston traff...