SOURCE: A review of Selected Poems, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, Autumn, 1993, pp. 876-77.

In the following review, Salkey notes that—although there are a few lines he did not like—on the whole, Goodison's Selected Poems is an exceptional collection of poetry.

The evocative power of Lorna Goodison's poetry derives its urgency and appeal from the heart-and-mind concerns she has for language, history, racial identity, and gender (and these are not as separate and consecutive as I have listed them, but rather as alternating and interwoven as they usually occur in the hurly-burly of human existence).

In the exceptionally engaging and indeed enticing selection of the poet's work recently issued by the University of Michigan Press [Selected Poems], which includes spiritual, humanistic, and political themes ranging from the southern Caribbean to North America, there are poems that depict the inconsolable condition of women struggling against the aridities...