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I Don't Want to Be Rich, Just Able
Poems
Carol Prejean Zippert
NewSouth Books
978-1-58838-058-6
$20.00 hardcover
5 x 8
173 pages
Published in 1997
Poetry
In this intimate collection of poems, an African American writer and mother looks with compelling honesty at love, faith, family, and what it means to be a woman and an African American. Writing sometimes with an almost childlike awe of the world around her, Carol Prejean Zippert has created a work of unusual depth, balance, and beauty.
Some of the poems are written in a musical patois that reflects the author’s early life in the Louisiana bayou country. Others draw on the civil rights experiences of rural Alabama. All of them celebrate the joys and struggles of life.
In Zippert’s poetry, we see a world of injustice and tragedy, but the greatest of these is in how easily the fundamental concepts of peace and justice elude us. Although “Flowers should shed their bright hues / and birds be silenced likewise” for nature to be in accord with actions of mankind, there is in Zippert’s poetry an unshakable faith in the potential for our redemption.
Exerpt from I Don’t Want to Be Rich, Just Able:
I don’t want to be rich, just able.
Able to care for my family.
Able to work for my church.
Able to prepare my roots and herbs to care for the sick of the community.
Able to bake my homemade breads and cakes and serve lots of food when visitors come.
Able to tend my garden, my chickens, ducks, and rabbits.
Able to quilt with my sisters.
Able to meet my debts and keep my good name.

Reviews
“Zippert's poetry is extremely refreshing. Her poems cause one to examine and experience life in a very special way. Zippert's poems satisfy the inner most parts of the soul!”
Amazon.com reviewer
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