The World Will Follow Joy

Turning Madness into Flowers (New Poems)

Alice Walker

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781595589873
• eBook ISBN:
  9781595588876
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

A poetry collection of “playful and crooning lyricism” from the National Book Award– and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple (Booklist).
 
In this dazzling new collection, Alice Walker offers over sixty new poems to incite and nurture contemporary activists. Hailed as a “lavishly gifted writer,” Walker imbues her poetry with evocative images, fresh language, anger, forgiveness, and profound wisdom (The New York Times).
 
Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she “distills struggles, crises, and tragedies down to bright, singing lessons in living with awareness and joy” (Booklist).
 
By attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows, as ever, her deep compassion, profound spirituality, and necessary political commitments. The poems in The World Will Follow Joy remind us of our human capacity to come together and take action, even in our troubled political times. “Her spirituality, concern for human rights, and almost old-fashioned, determined joyousness run deep and her devoted readers will want to follow her as she turns ‘madness into flowers’” (Library Journal).

Turning Madness into Flowers #1

If my sorrow were deeper

I’d be, along with you, under

the ocean’s floor;

but today I learn that the oil

that pools beneath the ocean floor

is essence

residue

remains

of all our

relations

all

our ancestors who have died and turned to oil

without our witness

eons ago.

We’ve always belonged to them.

Speaking for you, hanging, weeping, over the water’s edge

as well as for myself.

It is our grief

heavy, relentless,

trudging

us, however resistant,

to the decaying and rotten

bottom of things:

our grief bringing

us home.

***

What It Feels Like

As if I’ve swallowed

A watermelon

And

Sidestepping

My digestive tract

It has lodged

In my heart.

There it lies

Green

& whole

with a luscious

red

heart of its own

daring me

to cut.

***

Before I Leave the Stage

Before I leave the stage

I will sing the only song

I was meant truly to sing.

It is the song

of I AM.

Yes: I am Me

&

You.

WE ARE.

I love Us with every drop

of our blood

every atom of our cells

our waving particles

—undaunted flags of our Being—

neither here nor there.

***

Remember?

Remember

W...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Foreword
• What Makes the Dalai Lama Lovable?
• If I Was President (“Were” May Be Substituted by Those Who Prefer It)
• From: Poems for My Girls
• Don’t Be Like Those Who Ask for Everything
• Knowing You Might Someday Come
• Turning Madness into Flowers #1
• What It Feels Like
• Before I Leave the Stage
• Remember?
• Working Class Hero
• The Ways of Water
• You Want to Grow Old Like the Carters
• The Answer Is: Live Happily!
• Word Reaches Us
• When You See Water
• This Is a Story of How Love Works
• Alice and Kwamboka
• May It Be Said of Me
• And Do You See What They Have Bought with It?
• She
• Our Martyrs
• The Tree of Life Has Fallen
• To Change the World Enough
• Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit
• What Do I Get for Getting Old? A Picture Story for the Curious!
• Desire
• March Births
• Two Boys on a Pink Tricycle
• Coming to Worship the 1,000-Year-Old Cherry Tree
• Listening to Bedouins, Thinking of Bob
• Peonies
• Black and White Cows
• Worms Won’t Need a Menu
• From Paradise to Paradise
• Sailing the Hot Streets of Athens, Greece
• Life Takes Its Own Sweet Time
• One Meaning of the Immaculate Heart
• To Stand Beaming and Clapping
• And in That Sacred Time
• Why Peace Is Always a Good Idea
• Hope
• Tranquil
• The Raping of Maids
• This Human Journey
• In This You Are Wrong
• Hope to Sin Only in the Service of Waking Up
• The Part of God That Stings
• 9/11: An Irrelevant Truth
• The Buddha’s Disagreeable Relative
• We Who Have Survived
• Racism Dates Us
• The World We Want Is Us
• The Joyful News of Your Arrest
• Every Revolution Needs Fresh Poems
• The Foolishness of Captivity
• Despair Is the Ground Bounced Back From
• Occupying Mumia’s Cell
• Another Way to Peace
• We Pay a Visit to Those Who Play at Being Dead
• Democratic Womanism
• Democratic Motherism
• After Many Years and Much Silliness
• When I Join You
• Going Out to the Garden
• Notes
• Photo Credits