Book: The Festival of Wild Orchid by Ann-Margaret Lim Critic: Dr Glenville AshbyAnn-Margaret Lim is a poetic force.?Whether in classical mode via her sonnets,NFL Jerseys Outlet, villanelles or free verse offerings, she manages to capture the travails of life, genealogical fault lines, cultural fissures and the dystopia that bedevil some states.It is haunting but hopeful with?resilience and redemption that are ever lurking. The book’s opening salvo,?The Journey?explores a family ruptured by the exigency of circumstances, and forms the thematic encasement of this compelling work. It is tinged with race, xenophobia and the hiccups of acclimatization. It is reclamation of a new identity and the Jamaicanization of people from China. Like a stream into a river the theme flows effortlessly.The book cover of The Festival of Wild OrchidIn?The Darkening,?Lim seamlessly sustains the tempo. Yes, she recoils at the bitter pill of migration:?”They sent me away to be a slave – a brown boy in a yellow country,NHL Jerseys Authentic, she pierces the veil of the unknown music, culture is that balm, giving comfort to the despaired: “But there is one last hope for light – this tending of the verse that springs from my father who strummed banjo strings, blew into his harmonica and sang Chinese opera.”Lim bursts with empathy. She identifies with the history and plight of Haitians – the women and children…It is the spiritual paradigm evident in?Kingston Blues?where we read with eyes downcast:“The Cactus bites and Trench Town is what it was; a place where children know how to starve and women how to weep.” For the Mother and Child, lamentations blare: “I held my child and cried for my mother and child woke that Tuesday to die…”She continues: “For the memory of Toussaint and Dessalines; for the Haitians never mentioned in the books; for the Haitian with the monkey on his back. Why was there a price for the air you breathe in Haiti? Blood seeped down into the vein of our earth and I held my child?and cried.”Throughout there is a persistent feminine, matrifocal element – the Madonna and the Child.It’s an infusion that clothes her work with warmth and sensitivity, yet it remains steely. Ever the subtle activist, she rebels against traditional roles and invites nature to speak for her.?”Give me a god like the sea or gloomy clouds; to love the folding, unfolding mountains to search, to comprehend, to serenade.”?Later, she stands her ground, defending theological ideologues against the Black Man’s God. There is a healthy paradox in Lim’s work that is?richly authentic. That she has become the quintessential poet is hardly in question.Lim, a seed nurtured in Caribbean soil, immerses herself in past and contemporary cultures. She embraces music and dance: Jerk smoke, Expectation – the scent of the night and the stars wash their face to stay up for the dance.”…… But dolorous feelings of estrangement, embedded at the cellular, ancestral levels return, mercilessly.In September 11, 1987,?she intones: “There is?no Bob, no Peter, no Free I. They are coming to kill us.” It is a national…a cultural assassination.The Dance?journeys from 1986 to 2006, and the world it seems, has stood still.? Libido is rampant,Cheap Jerseys, sensibilities rule, and sound judgment is tossed. Anything unlikely is imminent.There’s a room spray-painted in blood that has not been rented in weeks; you pass there to go to the toilet.Lim is caught in a psychological labyrinth, a painful journey. Hers is a haunting past and a dubious future filled with trepidation, and foreboding, culminating with?”Heritage,”?– arguably,NFL Jerseys Clearance, the seal of her work. It is a literary tsunami,NFL Jerseys China, conjuring in a single sweep,Wholesale Jerseys, a?tortuous road of personal abandonment, genocide and a dissociative quest.?Heritage is frighteningly dark, philosophical and cryptic.It?ripens the imagination, leaving a slew of frown brows. She is figuratively magical: “I emptied my womb today; little men popped out with running mouths, milling lies like haggling mosquitoes. I watched glued to the corner, bracing…this figure sporting a sheepish look tumbled out of me…it accused me of birthing evil, stretched one scaly hand in, ripped out my womb and walked.”Echoes of William Blake!!“The Festival of the Wild Orchid” delivers on multiple levels, capturing life’s vicissitudes and the struggle for ancestral reconciliation and identity. It transcends personal struggles and sentiments, and trumpets a call for universal atonement. Undoubtedly, Lim’s work proves a tour de force of major historical significance.E mail:[e