From Harvey River (2008)

Like many of her poetry and story collections, Lorna Goodison's loving ode to her mother and Jamaican homeland, From Harvey River, is imbued with powerful lyrical imagery. (A blown kiss wasn't just caught, it ''floated across the hibiscus hedge, skipped on the flat white river stones...and hopped over the windowsill'' to someone's lap.) Goodison grew up in Kingston and never lived in the river town of the title, which was settled by her English great-grandfather William Harvey. So where did she get this richly detailed history of the place? Why, from a ''book'' her deceased mother gave her in a dream, of course. If only all dreams were so vividly lush. A-