Interior with Sudden Joy

Jamaican poet Goodison's seventh collection roots itself not only in the lush landscapes and turbulent history of the Caribbean, but in far-flung poetic territories like Ann Arbor and Rio de Janeiro; Yeats's Sligo, Wordsworth's Westmoreland and Van Gogh's imagined Orient. These mappings bring surrealism to incantatory rituals, the clearest examplesbeing ""The Domestic Science of Sunday Dinner"" and ""Max Ernst Painting,"" where ""this woman with her head gone// she is partly a nun, partly naked maja"" is offered as a clue in examining the mysterious aesthetic of the mutilated female form in art. Goodison continues to deftly expose the distortions of so-called ""objectivity"" in defining the literary arts in ""The Mango of Poetry."" Here she subverts a modern definition of poetry as ""silence,"" and compares the voluptuous fluidity of poetry to a mango, eaten in a ""bombay colored blouse"" to be stained by the fruit. In the book's first two sections, ""My Mother's Sea Chanty"" and ""My Father's Country,"" Goodison honors people such as Miss Mirry (""the ill-tempered domestic helper who hated me""), grandmother Hannah and Great-grandmother Leanna, with loving and vividly detailed histories. What is perhaps most fascinating in this collection is Goodison's formidable scope and exquisite vernacular style. While the final lines of many of these poems may seem quiet, perhaps even too subdued in contrast with more edgy sensual details, the book continually surprises with its insistently elegant, spiritual core and crystalline intelligence. (July)