Earl McKenzie’s poems are deceptively simple, but their crystalline observations record life in all its complexity.
Patricia Harkins, in The Caribbean Writer described his earlier Against Linearity as a ‘book to cherish’ for the particularity of its images from nature and ‘his keen insight into human hearts’. These qualities are deepened in this new collection, where the whiff of mortality demands an even stronger sense of continuance, affirmation and joy in love, family, music, art and, above all, in his beloved Jamaica.
In these poems of quirky, unassuming observations, McKenzie never preaches, but he does find sermons in lilies, and what he discovers for himself provides a way of wisdom for those readers inclined to look for it. And beyond the personal, he locates the sources of endurance in his grasp of Jamaican/Caribbean history.
Earl McKenzie was born and lives in Jamaica.
Patricia Harkins, in The Caribbean Writer described his earlier Against Linearity as a ‘book to cherish’ for the particularity of its images from nature and ‘his keen insight into human hearts’. These qualities are deepened in this new collection, where the whiff of mortality demands an even stronger sense of continuance, affirmation and joy in love, family, music, art and, above all, in his beloved Jamaica.
In these poems of quirky, unassuming observations, McKenzie never preaches, but he does find sermons in lilies, and what he discovers for himself provides a way of wisdom for those readers inclined to look for it. And beyond the personal, he locates the sources of endurance in his grasp of Jamaican/Caribbean history.
Earl McKenzie was born and lives in Jamaica.