Lexicon

by Allison Joseph

Lexicon is a worthy successor to Allison Joseph’s award-winning breakthrough, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman . This time around, this self-professed “barefaced woman” is setting her sighs/sights on language and what it does for and with and to her. Joseph loves language, making it her slippery passion in poems about childhood griefs and fashion faux pas, movie musicals and empty airports, “rules” for writing and rules for reading. Though Joseph loves language, it doesn’t always love her back—but in her wise, readable, and imaginative way, she persists while documenting the minefields of racism and sexism. Joseph finds joy in the most unlikely of places, and in Lexicon , her adoration for the written word lets us see those places in sharp and evocative relief. All hail this bounty, this Lexicon !

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published April 27, 2021

About the author

Allison Joseph (born 1967) is an American poet, editor and professor. She is author of six poetry collections, most recently, My Father's Kites: Poems (Steel Toe Books, 2010).

Born in London to parents of Jamaican heritage, Allison Joseph grew up in Toronto, Canada, and the Bronx. She graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A., and from Indiana University with an M.F.A. She teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and is Director of the Young Writers Workshop at SIUC, which she founded in 1999: a four-day summer program for high school students. Many of SIUC's creative writing faculty and graduate students are involved with the workshop, and the student participants come from several states. In 1995, she was one of the founding editors of Crab Orchard Review as the magazine's poetry editor and has also worked as editor-in-chief since August 2001. She lives in Carbondale, Illinois.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Leah]

I don't like rating poetry books because I don't think I'm in any place to judge. I enjoyed this collection, some pieces more than others. The themes of womanhood and blackness were well done and poignant, and the collection worked nicely as a whole.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written collection that touches on all the most pressing issues regarding race in American Society. I wanted 100 more pages.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this collection-- it's really approachable and relatable. The poems use a blend of humor, sorrow, sensuality, and observation to create a collection with a strong sense of self. I'm glad I picked this up.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about language, desire, identity.

from What They're Thinking While You're Reading Your Poems: "Later, each on of these people will tell you // how much they loved your poems, / especially the ones about God, that one / three letter word you never mentioned"

from Figure Study, Reclining Female: "You make me the object of your gaze, / etch me in strokes on paper, my likeness / a haunted chiaroscuro, my wary face // turned out to meet your view, naked / body turned for privacy, the bedspread— / our bedspread—rumpled and gathered / below my feet, tossed there as if after / consummation."