Subversive Sonnets: Poems - Softcover

?Subversive Sonnets is an astonishing achievement. Beautifully gloved in the materiality of everyday things and not-always everyday places, these poems yet push the reader towards speculative realms of gold, where real places also become mind places and homes of deep feeling. Mordecai readily takes us from the finely personal to wider grief for North America?s, the Caribbean?s, and all our sins, from the saucily bawdy to political fury and horror at a New World turned bitterly, bitingly old, or from a joyous bounce to subsequent personal loss and collective agony that can become skin-crawlingly terrifying. These sonnets are the achievement of years of a poet's wisdom.?
?TIMOTHY J REISS Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, New York University
?Subversive Sonnets is sweet, acerbic, scintillating, and sassy. If you want to be right, you can't go wrong in reading these verses that modernize the sonnet, putting it in service of mischief, not only meditation. Mordecai has assembled a collection that is arrogant in its dazzle and provocative in its sizzle. Here's the real poetry, folks: thought given discipline and then set free to sing and/or singe.?
?GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto

"Like Pamela Mordecai? other work, "Subversive Sonnets" is clever, witty, insightful and linguistically acrobatic. Never one to shy away from difficult themes, Mordecai employs the sonnet form to sing more than ?ittle songs? There is organ music here too as thematically she moves between the bottomless deeps and praise of heaven? wonders. A courageous, affirmative, and ? yes ? entertaining read. A wise, highly crafted and satisfying exploration of life deeply lived in all its infinite refractions and life as we? like it to be." ?LIVE SENIOR, author of "Dancing Lessons"
"?ubversive Sonnets" is sweet, acerbic, scintillating, and sassy. If you want to be right, you can't go wrong in reading these verses that modernize the sonnet, putting it in service of mischief, not only meditation. Mordecai has assembled a collection that is arrogant in its dazzle and provocative in its sizzle. Here's the real poetry, folks: thought given discipline and then set free to sing and/or singe.?/br> ?EORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto

"Like Pamela Mordecai's other work, "Subversive Sonnets" is clever, witty, insightful and linguistically acrobatic. Never one to shy away from difficult themes, Mordecai employs the sonnet form to sing more than ?little songs'. There is organ music here too as thematically she moves between the bottomless deeps and praise of heaven's wonders. A courageous, affirmative, and - yes - entertaining read. A wise, highly crafted and satisfying exploration of life deeply lived in all its infinite refractions and life as we'd like it to be." - OLIVE SENIOR, author of "Dancing Lessons"
""Subversive Sonnets" is sweet, acerbic, scintillating, and sassy. If you want to be right, you can't go wrong in reading these verses that modernize the sonnet, putting it in service of mischief, not only meditation. Mordecai has assembled a collection that is arrogant in its dazzle and provocative in its sizzle. Here's the real poetry, folks: thought given discipline and then set free to sing and/or singe." - GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto

Poetry. These "subversive sonnets" overhaul the traditional sonnet form to address a range of subjects, from the tenderness of love to the terror of rape, punishment, torture, and murder. The poet's quest is to corral iambics into the demotic of Jamaican creoles as well as forms of English past and present. Mordecai has an unfailing ear for voices, for the music that sings and laughs and laments the stories of family, clan, and tribe, and thus celebrating life. SUBVERSIVE SONNETS is Pamela Mordecai's fifth collection of poetry.