She Walks in Beauty

March 1, 2011

For Kennedy, poetry has the great gift of "shap[ing] an endless conversation about the most important things in life." She learned that when she turned 50 and three friends sent her poems that afforded her both comfort and guidance. Thereafter she began creating this anthology of nearly 200 poems addressing the various stages of a woman's life, among them "Falling in Love," "Motherhood," "Death and Grief," and, yes, "Beauty, Clothes, and Things of This World." Many of the poems here are expected, e.g., Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee," but others are delightful discoveries or reminders. Consider Kim Addonizio's "What Do Women Want?": "I want a red dress/ I want it flimsy and cheap/ I want it too tight/ I want to wear it/ until someone tears it off me." Or Paneshia Jones's "Bra Shopping": "At sixteen I am a jeans and t-shirt wearing tomboy who can think/ a few million more places to be...." Or Anna Swir's "The Greatest Love": "Her dear one says: You have hair like pearls.'/ Her children say: / Old fool.' " The poets range from Sappho to Shakespeare to Plath, and Kennedy has the nerve to open with Gertrude Stein. VERDICT All in all, a warm and comfortable anthology for anyone (men, too) seeking solace in verse. [See the Q&A with Kennedy on p. 74.--Ed.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2011
Kennedys previous poetry anthologies, The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2001) and A Family of Poems (2005), became best-sellers. Her newest is an even more exciting and personal assemblage. The idea for a poetry collection charting the phases of womens lives, Kennedy explains in her wise and gracious introduction, came to her when she turned 50, and friends sent her celebratory poems. Reading poems, she writes, can help bring clarity and insight to emotions that can be confusing or contradictory. She organizes this thrillingly expansive and varied collection in sections with such enticing titles as Making Love, Breaking Up, Beauty, Clothes, and Things of the World, and How to Live. That she is versed in poets tried and true (Sappho, Donne, Shelley, Dickinson, Rilke) is no surprise, but her fluency in contemporary poets is electrifying. Here are poems by Wislawa Szymborska, W. S. Merwin, Mary Oliver, Barbara Ras, Natasha Trethewey, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye. This virtuoso anthology of deep feeling and bright humor should reach readers who would not otherwise pick up a book of poems.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)