Jonestown and Other Madness: Poetry

My rating of this book is really more 3.5 stars. I just felt that I had to offset the only other review of this book (which is angry and ignorant). Pat Parker was a black Lesbian activist poet who lived in Oakland during the sixties and seventies among the hundreds of folks who would later go off to form the ill-fated Jonestown community. But, as Ms. Parker states in her introduction, the poems are not primarily about that tragic event (a few are) but are inspired by the media treatment of Jonestown and how people process the "normal madness" that surrounds us. Having said that, this book of free verse is not the best book of poems I've ever read. I'm not a scholar or academic (or even much of a poet) so I can't speak to the book on that level. It's just that few of the poems hit me on a gut level--which is the main reason I read poetry (that and poems are short). But I did appreciate poet's voice--being neither Black, queer, nor female, I found it enlightening. If you are at all interested in the voices of oppressed people you should give Pat Parker a look. BTW Pat Parker has a library named after her in New York City.