The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours: The Poetry of Jill Scott

If you love the music of Jill Scott for its beautifully personal and uplifting content, you'll simply devour these nearly 150 pages of her poems. Jill has often said that she's kept written journals for years. As many of Jill's song lyrics read like poems to me (and I dearly love them), I was not surprised to find myself deeply engrossed in Jill's accounts of life and love in this compilation. Jill's writings unapologetically hold love up and examine, admire and venerate it. Her poems also touch on issues of friendship and family. I've known since I heard the first song from her very first album that Jill was not just another singer, but a poet who happens to possess and beautiful voice and undeniable music talent. Now she is not only an accomplished poet, but a published one. It speaks so highly of her talent and her very nature that the likes of Sonia Sanchez and Maya Angelou have recognized the power of her gift and her loving, intelligent spirit. Never a big fan of audio books, I'm dying for the audio version of this collection!!!

I purchased this book of heartfelt poems at a recent Jill Scott concert. I started reading it the next day and found I was taking a ride on an express train to expressionisms! She's not only a talented singer and performer, but also a very gifted and talented writer ...and I am so very happy, she allowed me to step (albeit briefly) into her world of words and glimpse her poetic soul as she lays down layer upon layer of the (3) L's: Love, Life and Loss. She covers the long and short of them all! There is no fluff here...all emotions are accounted for and I promise, you will enjoy the journey just as I have! Great job Ms. Scott...thanks for sharing a very big part of you, with a very small part of me! Your talent is remarkable!

this book of poetry offers a glimpse into jill scott's beautiful and soulful life. full of poetry about love, loss, life and even the beauty salon, it's a great springtime lounging read!

Jill Scott is a singer and performer, though I have only rarely heard her music. Sonia Sanchez wrote a wonderful encomium for Scott, saying, "I know Jill Scott. She is pot liquor and cornbread. She is caviar and champagne. She is a blues song and a spirtual. She is Nina, Leontyne, Sarah, Aretha." Sanchez' poetry is one of the wonders of the 20th century so I decided to give her protégé a try. It wound up with me liking the book and I imagine many will too. Unlike Sanchez, her subject matter is not very variegated. It's all about love, love, and more love, and then there's some about feminism and black pride. She can compose infinite variations on these three topics, but after awhile you're like, "Oh, not another haiku about crazy love." However in a later section of the book Scott experiments with taking on different personae and these are much stronger. One poem takes the point of view of the adult looking back to days of childhood and realizing her mother loved her. "She cries when she sees me/ holds me close when she knows I need me/ "Mommy" I say/ "Mommy" I say/ Smells so good/ Reminds me to go out and play/ makes me strawberry lemonade." The sights and sounds of ordinary life are wistfully accounted for, almost as though she wasn't a star and just Jill from the block you might say. There's another poem that alludes to the pain of having lost a child, rather like Joni Mitchell's poignant "Little Green." And the best of all she speaks from the perspective of a roughened, overworked street prostitute with a broken soul whose age becomes the turning point of the poem's final, shocking lines. In her preface, Scott gives credit to her forebears, including Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson. This poem "One of the Reasons" will remind readers of some of the soliloquy poems of Sapphire.