Review by Booklist Review
A poet and revered performer steeped in the sensuous world, Smith is well attuned to the otherworldly dimension of dreams and cosmic visions. In this intimate and vaulting collection, she ushers us into the kingdom of childhood, a realm of clouds, marbles, and myths. As she explains in the foreword, when these transporting poems were written 20 years ago, she was inexplicably plunged into a terrible and inexpressible melancholy. That dark spell yielded poems of radiant wonder that can now be read as a lyrical companion to her National Book Award-winning memoir, Just Kids (2010). In the exquisite Barndance. The child, mystified by the commonplace, moves effort- / lessly into the strange. where, late at night, she senses the presence of the ghostly woolgatherers. . . . Gathering what needs to be gathered. The discarded. The adored. Smith looks to family history for sources of her artistic impulses and portrays herself in adulthood as a roaming mystic, journal in hand, heart and mind open. Exultations of concentrated beauty and mystery ignite Smith's soulful poems about the making of an artist.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"The writing of it drew me from my strange torpor and I hope that in some measure it will fill the reader with a vague and curious joy." Poet, artist, and musician Smith, winner of the National Book Award for Just Kids, provides a new introduction for this childhood memoir (first published in 1992), describing how the book developed from a period of intense depression. Smith's concise, lyrical essays invite the reader to dwell on the text. In "Barndance," she describes how children grow to recognize the dichotomy between physical similarities to their families and cognitive differences. Several essays discuss her artistic goals, and in "Two Worlds," she writes about her dream of becoming a painter. Belonging is a frequent theme, and in "Millet," she writes about her connection, and lack thereof, with her grandmothers and mother. Half beautiful language and metaphors, half raw emotion, this book (which includes a handful of personal photos) will inspire and influence a new generation of logophiles as they read and reread this absorbing, meditative work. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A slim, poetic memoir of Smith's early years. Originally published in 1992, this manuscript was handwritten on graph paper when Smith lived with her husband and children near Detroit during a time in which she experienced "a terrible and inexpressible melancholy." Throughout, the author intersperses vignettes from childhood with black-and-white photos. The title stems from an exchange with an old man whom children feared; she forgot her question but remembers his answer: "They be the woolgatherers." Smith writes, "I was not at all sure what a woolgatherer was but it sounded a worthy calling and seemed a good job for me. And so I kept watch [and]…wandered among them, through thistle and thorn, with no task more exceptional than to rescue a fleeting thought, as a tuft of wool, from the comb of the wind." Ardent Smith fans may be enamored with her recollections, which range from mourning the family dog's death to nebulous lines such as, "I drifted to a place that seemed more present than myself, sitting, dutifully sewing as my fingers let slip the thread and joined my mind, elsewhere." In verse, she writes, "Careful how you bare yer soul / Careful not to bare it all." In a more concrete passage, she declares, "The only thing you can count on is change." The writing elucidates, to some degree, Smith's artistic path, with themes of ritualizing time and space rippling throughout. After saying prayers, Smith recounts, "on particularly wondrous nights…something would unzip and I'd be off to be among them [the woolgatherers]. I did not run, I'd glide--some feet above the grass. This was my secret ability--my crown." This edition includes a new afterword, penned by Smith in 2020, that addresses the pandemic as it relates to restricted travel; she combats restlessness by journeying through memories. Ethereal spins of innocence and enchantment. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
