Blue on a Blue Palette

"Maybe because Dave Brubeck's 'Blue Rondo a 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 strongly 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 villanell-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 Poetry