The World Is Round
Publication Date: July 2013
Trade Paper: 128 pages / 6.125 x 8.5 inches
ISBN 978-0-8101-5233-5
$16.95
Purchase: Northwestern University Press // Amazon // IndieBound
From the publisher: The World Is Round, Nikky Finney’s third volume of poetry, collects the wisps of memory we carry with us throughout our earthly lives and weaves them into deft and nuanced poems that emphasize understanding the cycles of life. The settings offer a view into the kaleidoscope of human experience: the sweetness and shock of family life, the omnipresent wash of memory, and the ebullience of warm Southern air. The World Is Round carries with it an implicit challenge—to the author as a poet, and to the reader as a fellow human—to see the characters and details and events of our lives with clarity, fearlessness, and love. The result is poems that range the gamut of human reach and resilience, fury and frailty. The poet’s vision of community requires understanding and tolerance from every breathing soul. Finney illuminates the cruelties of the sometimes gawking, narrow-minded world and makes a plea for compassion inspired by our common humanity.
Reviews
“A poem, when it works, is a rolling realization of ideas and emotion that takes you somewhere you’ve never been. Nikky Finney does that for me. Every now and then, I find myself in a room with a stage and there she is, reading poems, pulling me out of myself and bringing me home. The World Is Round opens all of my doors and windows and airs me out with a cold and truthful wind.”
—Walter Mosley