Overview

The snap, pop, and roar of Bonita Lee Penn's poetry carries readers through the fires of time. This remarkable collection reflects themes of urgency similar to those of the Black Arts Movement. Her poems call out names, explore oppression within and outside of the Black community all the while demanding accountability. Her poems travel the path of intergenerational Black women's experiences in search of identity, protection, and love. Penn blends ruthless images of a grandmother asking for her matches, to an unjust history on repeat, to joy found in all spaces Black, to calm healing chants. Bonita Lee Penn's poems are prayers of protection for Black people in America.

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Bonita Lee Penn's words in When the Trees Tesify are at once a sharp-edged sword and a sweet balm of healing for what aches. Her poetry speaks to histories that beckon us to remember and reclaim our truths. Bonita marries rage with the divine and gives new life to poetics. - DuEwa Frazier, poet & author of Goddess Under the Bridge: Poems, producer/host of Nerdacity Poets have the impossible task of balancing their mind and spirit, their duende, and all of the histories around them into lyric movements of inspiration and protest. Most poets can't manage all their disparate obligations, but as readers will soon recognize, Bonita Penn can and does in her stunning new collection When the Trees Tesify. Only a poet as deft as Penn can call out the American traditions of violence and oppression with the same strength and clarity as she praises Black generosity and love. When the Trees Tesify is a book of texture and capaciousness like none I've read before. These are poems of awareness and witness. These are poems of resistance and bounty. --Adrian Matejka, Editor, Poetry magazine

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