What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison

Award-winning African-American poet Camille T. Dungy presents What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison, a collection of free-verse poetry about the vagaries of life, milestone marks, and common day-to-day observations, all narrated with a down-to-earth flavor and a unique gift for succinctly shaping emotion into the briefest of stanzas. A colorful collection that both revels in the joys of life and mourns its tragedies. "Fear": Do not change / your soap. I will not / know you. Fresh / from the shower / you smell sharp, / like a stone. / I know this. / I call it love. // Like my knowledge / of this hillside: sage / on the steepest slope, / eucalyptus, / near the rocky caves. This is how / I find my way home.

Dungy's poetry is entirely accessible. She brings a fresh and mature perspective to such well-worn themes as family, history, and the power and intimacy of relationships (to one another and to places -- costructucted and natural environments). The voices of her characters ring true, and her words are laden with sensual pleasures. Truly a joy.