Out of Violence into Poetry: Poems 2018–2021

By Margaret Randall

Margaret Randall's most recent collection of poems, Out of Violence Into Poetry, was written over these past few years when language itself was violated by a president who lied until each lie, repeated often enough, resembled a terrible truth in the public discourse. Reality, sanity, beauty: all bend and run the risk of breaking when distorted beyond recognition. These poems consciously restore language to its natural habitat. They deal with history, memory, loss, life, death and promise. They address love and aging. They become a welcome refuge at a time of uncertainty and take us on disparate journeys that often have surprising twists. There is humor as well as rage. We cannot leave it to the politicians alone to give words their meaning back. That is the job of poets, and this book does that job well. Randall is the author of nearly 200 books, spanning more than six decades. Out of Violence into Poetry may well be her finest collection of poetry to date.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781609406202

Margaret Randall

Margaret Randall is a poet, feminist, photographer, oral historian, and social activist. She has lived in Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba, and other Latin American countries. She is the author of more than 90 books of poetry, prose, oral testimony, and memoir, including, recently, Haydee Santamaria, Cuban Revolutionary: She Led by Transgression (2015), Che on My Mind (2014), and the poetry collections The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones (2013) and About Little Charlie Lindbergh (2014).

Book preview

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman

Words and images keep showing up.

I manage a quick sidestep

to let them pass

but cannot avoid collision.

Waiting at the doctor or dentist’s

I thumb through a worn magazine.

Ideas leap from its pages:

arrows snagging memory.

In the supermarket foreign foods aisle,

on labels I cannot read and boxes

I’ll never purchase, coded phrases

act as if they belong to me.

Driving across high desert, piñon and sage

for miles on either side,

I pull off road, grab pen and paper

and begin.

And looking in a mirror or running

from myself, I imagine a portrait

of the artist as an old woman,

in past tense and sure future.

I pause to soak up sun or hide in the shade

of someone else’s story. The poem

is always waiting around the corner

ready to tell me who I am.

I Celebrate

for Michelle Otero

Let me celebrate this cobalt sky, blazing

desert fire and red rock canyons

revealing messages from those who went before,

the stories they tell as I listen

to their wonder and their warnings.

I celebrate each child, grandchild and

greatgrandchild, human lines

of personhood I follow in loops feeding

back to myself, astonished and grateful

as I trace my oldest questions on their lips.

I celebrate the woman who walks beside me,

beloved companion on this journey,

artist’s eye and perfect temperature of skin,

crinkling laugh lines about her