Five Poems

by Toni Morrison, Kara Walker (Illustrator)

Genres: Poetry

24 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.
The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.

Reviews

[♡︎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

for a minute, i forgot how much i love poetry. and when that poetry comes in the form of Toni Morrison, my love of it exceeds love itself. Each of these five poems was deceptive in its simplicity and beautiful. i will be definitely be coming back to them🥰.

[grey]

ending the year with toni <3

[Mei-Ling · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars actually. Not spectacular. Good. I liked these lines:
Then on your skin a breath caresses
The salt your eyes have shed.
From Someone Leans Near
and
I am not seaworthy.
Look how the fish mistake my hair for home.
then
Let me be earth bound; star fixed
From I Am Not Seaworthy