Back to the Light

"Back to the Light is a girl's song, is a big loud woman's song, is a country girl who has seen the blood of many things high note, is a woman who foolishly buys shoes she can't run in elegy, is a growling great mother's dirt road aria, is a terrified 5 year old's courageous chant to the world. George Ella reminds us, in elegant George Ella style, how the country located just below the nose and just above the chin of a woman's face is a sparkling cave of galaxies."—Nikky Finney

"For nearly four decades, George Ella Lyon's poetry has shown us the healing power of writing about place. Hers is a music where the self and community meet, and she has empowered countless others to sing their songs of their places. I know I am one of the countless, having found my way thanks to George Ella's humble, radical, enduring life's work. For me, she walks in the lineage of other luminaries like Joy Harjo, Alicia Ostriker, and Sonia Sanchez, those women writers who refuse to leave others behind, and though I can't imagine being without any of George Ella's books, if I could own only one, it would be this one. In Back to the Light, George Ella Lyon turns her courage inward, sharing the hard fact that she is not only from "clothespins" and "Clorox" but also abuse and shame. As the book moves through the years, each poem lifts the poet's inner-child out of trauma, holding her close, tenderly giving the fierce love that child always needed to sing her own freedom song. Back to the Light is a pivotal new piece to George Ella's oeuvre, a road map to that place all too often abandoned ourselves. I wish I could buy this book for every woman I know."—Rebecca Gayle Howell