Blue on a Blue Palette
Blue on a Blue Palette
Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette reflects on the condition of women—their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys—which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos—replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: “Say history. Claim. Say wild.”
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“You do with a line what painters and butchers do with a knife! Beautiful. Moody. Celebratory”
— Toi Derricotte, Co-Founder of Cave Canem and the Recipient Frost Medal (Poetry Society of America) and Wallace Stevens Award (Academy of American Poets)
“Maybe because Dave Brubeck’s ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’ was the first piece of music my jazz-loving daddy ever played for me, and blue is, hands down, my favorite color, I fell head-over-heels for Lynne Thompson’s snappy, all systems go paean to blue. Flying a banner of unfettered joy and lucidity, she champions African American resilience (‘Langston Won’t Stay in His Grave’) and fearless womanhood (‘A Woman’s Body Aging, Still Loves Itself’)—in the face of everyday ignorance and carnage. With the unfailing wand of her intelligence, empathy, and bull’s-eye humor, everything this fast-paced poet contemplates turns to dazzling sparks and sleight-of-hand.”
— Cyrus Cassells author of The World That the Shooter Left Us
“Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette is at turns—and, often, all at once—old and new. That is, rooted strong in a long tradition and legitimately experimental. Thompson’s range in form and subject matter is equaled only by the deftness with which she handles each. In these pages we get a true blue blueswoman who knows when to whisper and when to wail, one who has lived some, and means to make song of what she’s seen.”
— John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
“Singing the blues in this beautiful and devastating collection, Lynne Thompson calls on the tradition of poets such as Patricia Smith and Adrienne Rich to examine a culture of injustice and loss for women and for people of color. In this moving tribute to resistance, voice, and action, Thompson affirms, ‘So they know // as you know // There will never be a last of us // We come // We come like rivers.’ Thompson employs a variety of forms, from abecedarian to cento and villanelle in skillful, smart and generous poems that include allusions to nursery rhymes, Bible verses, musicians, artists, and writers to explore the tension between creation and violence, declaring, ‘I think I might just be a clock // & juju power in a terrible century / a needle & the way to plunge it in.’ This is an important collection, one to keep close, as the layers of resilience and hard-won praise grow richer with each read.”
— Ellen Bass, author of Indigo and Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets
“In Blue on a Blue Palette, Lynne Thompson sings “Blues got me and gone” to “Say woman,” to claim her voice, her yes, and to say no. To “arrange a resistance,” the poet speaks with candor about the female body, desire, and aging, speaks from “anguish” about male violence against females and police violence against people of color, and, determined not to “fail history,” she claims her role as “a daughter” who has “lived to tell you this” about the “Blue Water” “sorry with our bones.” Dear Reader, “how the choices are few for / those who ignore women in revolution.””
— Jami Macarty, author of The Long Now Conditions Permit