What do you think?
Rate this book
Once
This first volume of poetry established Walker as a poet of unusual sensitivity and power. All of the poems in this collection were written either in East Africa, where Walker spent the summer of 1965, or during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College. “Brief slashing poems-young and in the sun” (Muriel Rukeyser).
96 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 1968
About the author
Alice Walker
256 books6,794 followersNoted American writer Alice Walker won a Pulitzer Prize for her stance against racism and sexism in such novels as
The Color Purple
(1982).
People awarded this preeminent author of stories, essays, and poetry of the United States. In 1983, this first African woman for fiction also received the national book award. Her other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland , Meridian , The Temple of My Familiar , and Possessing the Secret of Joy . In public life, Walker worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_W...
People awarded this preeminent author of stories, essays, and poetry of the United States. In 1983, this first African woman for fiction also received the national book award. Her other books include The Third Life of Grange Copeland , Meridian , The Temple of My Familiar , and Possessing the Secret of Joy . In public life, Walker worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_W...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews
March 16, 2015
Even after the copy that I dared order online had fallen apart into single pages, I spent a couple of days with this beautiful collection, and I allowed the words to circle my thoughts. Once - so much to be taken from this singular word. There I sat, outside in the green dust of this Southern Spring (if you live in these parts you know of this layer of green that sticks to everything) while humming birds local to the same Southern America state where Alice Walker grew up, produced birdsong around me. Reading amid that kind of scenic beauty, I traveled through parts of East Africa, America, and to other parts of the world, via characters like the "beautiful man/all blond and/Czech."
"African Images," with its haiku-like structure and long-form sections, captured me instantly:
xl
Under the moon
luminous
huts...
Brown breasts stuck
out to taunt
the sullen wind.
Admittedly, I wanted this collection after reading, The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. That book, which drew me closer to the prominence of Walker, also motivated me to read this her first collection of poetry, written when she was in college, pregnant and contemplating suicide, as one can glimpse from these words:
foetal fears
unborn
monsters given
berth
At Sarah Lawrence College, Walker would slip her poems underneath her college professor's door, and that professor slipped those poems to a publisher. Knowing this story behind the collection, I couldn't wait to sample Walker's first collection of poetry, before moving on to some of her other works. She writes simply and beautifully, her use of the em-dash reminiscent of Dickinson, and her subtext seemingly similar to what I came across in Plath's Ariel.
I cringe when I see this collection only referred to as a civil rights collection because although Walker is a prominent human rights activist, when you actually view these words closely, you see observation and contemplation through imagery. Yes, love, injustice, race, beauty, wonderment, are all themes, but that's the point: there are many motifs.
"Once" was my favorite poem, because of how racial injustice was captured with so much sensitivity:
Looking up I see
a strong arm
raised
the Law
Someone in America
is being
protected
(from me.)
There are many parts to "Once," some bold, some elusive, and some I marked with question marks. The imagery, however, is fascinating:
v
It is true -
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to
swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
Other favorites:
1. "To the Man In The Yellow Terry"
2. "The Kiss"
3. "To Die Before One Wakes Must Be Glad" (excerpted above)
Now on to the next Walker read...
"African Images," with its haiku-like structure and long-form sections, captured me instantly:
xl
Under the moon
luminous
huts...
Brown breasts stuck
out to taunt
the sullen wind.
Admittedly, I wanted this collection after reading, The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. That book, which drew me closer to the prominence of Walker, also motivated me to read this her first collection of poetry, written when she was in college, pregnant and contemplating suicide, as one can glimpse from these words:
foetal fears
unborn
monsters given
berth
At Sarah Lawrence College, Walker would slip her poems underneath her college professor's door, and that professor slipped those poems to a publisher. Knowing this story behind the collection, I couldn't wait to sample Walker's first collection of poetry, before moving on to some of her other works. She writes simply and beautifully, her use of the em-dash reminiscent of Dickinson, and her subtext seemingly similar to what I came across in Plath's Ariel.
I cringe when I see this collection only referred to as a civil rights collection because although Walker is a prominent human rights activist, when you actually view these words closely, you see observation and contemplation through imagery. Yes, love, injustice, race, beauty, wonderment, are all themes, but that's the point: there are many motifs.
"Once" was my favorite poem, because of how racial injustice was captured with so much sensitivity:
Looking up I see
a strong arm
raised
the Law
Someone in America
is being
protected
(from me.)
There are many parts to "Once," some bold, some elusive, and some I marked with question marks. The imagery, however, is fascinating:
v
It is true -
I've always loved
the daring
ones
Like the black young
man
Who tried
to crash
All barriers
at once,
wanted to
swim
At a white
beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
Other favorites:
1. "To the Man In The Yellow Terry"
2. "The Kiss"
3. "To Die Before One Wakes Must Be Glad" (excerpted above)
Now on to the next Walker read...
July 22, 2020
This is Alice Walker’s first collection of poems originally published in 1968. The book I own is the inspiration for what I want to write. The book I have is the 1976 Harvest edition. The edition I have is not even shown among the choices of editions on "goodreads", which is too bad because the cover art is amazing. At first I thought I owned the original 1968 edition but I looked a little closer and discovered my error. So as I read the yellowed pages of this book it really brought me back in time. This book was published 44 years ago and to me that is thought provoking. The “well of the past” Joseph Campbell refers to is not so deep for me that I cannot drop my bucket to the bottom of that personal well. Fortunately, I can still draw water from my memory. I share my reviews with a lot of younger readers so I want to try to give you a glimpse of what I mean here.
I spent my youth surrounded by books and my mother, who owned this book before me, was probably the most avid reader I knew at the time. For the younger set, to whom 44 years puts us sometime in the stone age, this meant that there were no ebooks, no pdf books, no online ordering, no Kindles. If you wanted books you had to go to the public library or to a bookstore. In my memory the library is an amazing place and I suspect I could spend hours wandering through the shelves looking at what is there. As Jorge Luis Borges says, “I have always imagined that paradise will be some kind of library.”
I am not sure when the computerization of ordering books occurred but I do know it was not in 1976. A bookstore like the one my mother would have had to buy this book in would not have existed near our home. I have to try to imagine my mother traveling to a bookstore, remote from where we lived. I have to picture her finding the poetry section and selecting this book. This book would have had to travel with her across the years and across the country at least once and it stayed on her bookshelves over time and place. Now it is on my bookshelf. How privileged I am to have this book with me today, to have been able to read this book and to tell you about it. One day when I travel and don’t return I hope this book will live on.
Right now I am also reading Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which is her collection of essays. Between that book and the book jacket of "Once" there is some history behind her first collection of poems I discuss here. One of her professors was the 20th century poet Muriel Rukeyser. Walker formed a bond with Rukeyser and was mentored by her and one of the results was this book. A thread, a bond, an immeasurable minute chain of lives great and small meet in “Once”. As a collection of poems I could sense a deep love of life coming from Walker’s pen. She writes of her time in Africa and I think of Kiese Laymon’s essays because he brought before my eyes the idea of abundance in life - and this is what Alice Walker’s poems bring out. In this volume we see the strains and complexities of her young life set in verse. I look forward to reading her second collection of poems called “Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems,” which also graces my shelf.
I haven’t analyzed any poems in particular here. Today I just wanted to tell a story and share a scent of nostalgia. I hope you enjoyed this review.
I spent my youth surrounded by books and my mother, who owned this book before me, was probably the most avid reader I knew at the time. For the younger set, to whom 44 years puts us sometime in the stone age, this meant that there were no ebooks, no pdf books, no online ordering, no Kindles. If you wanted books you had to go to the public library or to a bookstore. In my memory the library is an amazing place and I suspect I could spend hours wandering through the shelves looking at what is there. As Jorge Luis Borges says, “I have always imagined that paradise will be some kind of library.”
I am not sure when the computerization of ordering books occurred but I do know it was not in 1976. A bookstore like the one my mother would have had to buy this book in would not have existed near our home. I have to try to imagine my mother traveling to a bookstore, remote from where we lived. I have to picture her finding the poetry section and selecting this book. This book would have had to travel with her across the years and across the country at least once and it stayed on her bookshelves over time and place. Now it is on my bookshelf. How privileged I am to have this book with me today, to have been able to read this book and to tell you about it. One day when I travel and don’t return I hope this book will live on.
Right now I am also reading Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which is her collection of essays. Between that book and the book jacket of "Once" there is some history behind her first collection of poems I discuss here. One of her professors was the 20th century poet Muriel Rukeyser. Walker formed a bond with Rukeyser and was mentored by her and one of the results was this book. A thread, a bond, an immeasurable minute chain of lives great and small meet in “Once”. As a collection of poems I could sense a deep love of life coming from Walker’s pen. She writes of her time in Africa and I think of Kiese Laymon’s essays because he brought before my eyes the idea of abundance in life - and this is what Alice Walker’s poems bring out. In this volume we see the strains and complexities of her young life set in verse. I look forward to reading her second collection of poems called “Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems,” which also graces my shelf.
I haven’t analyzed any poems in particular here. Today I just wanted to tell a story and share a scent of nostalgia. I hope you enjoyed this review.
May 22, 2017
You can still the start of the beautiful poetry that will come. But of the three volumes that I have read, this is my least favorite. I'm not sure why. There still is some very powerful verse here.
October 27, 2020
This was... alright? I sadly didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to. It has a couple of memorable lines and a couple of poems I liked in their entirety but not much else. I also maybe read it too sparsely because there's clearly a first thematical part but then it sort of got muddled... Maybe it was me.
July 26, 2018
Alice Walker's first poetry collection, and wow, it nearly blew me away. She was apparently very young when she wrote these but they are vibrant and flowing with life. I devoured them very quickly.
February 13, 2018
Sped through this! The poems set in Africa felt incomplete to me, more like notes jotted in a journal than complete poems. Parts of the title poem were quite powerful, but it didn't come together as a whole for me. Surprisingly, the "love" poems struck me the most. My favorites were:
-What Ovid Taught Me
-So We've Come at Last to Freud
-The Smell of Lebanon
-Warning
-Suicide
-Exercises on Themes from Life
-What Ovid Taught Me
-So We've Come at Last to Freud
-The Smell of Lebanon
-Warning
-Suicide
-Exercises on Themes from Life
February 1, 2017
Like Alice Walker in the 1960s, I too graduate in the spring. I love and need her experience now.
October 6, 2014
I've read several of Alice Walker's fiction books before, but I have never read her poetry before. I really enjoyed this volume, written during the sixties but still fresh today.There are some beautiful images in here, and the issues the poetry raises are still relevant in today's society (sadly still very relevant, racism and sexism are still with us).
February 11, 2015
It's not really possible to put a star rating on most books of poetry - Some resonate, some don't, some are for later, and some I wish I'd read years ago. One I learned by heart so will definitely take that with me, even though - or perhaps because - I've no idea what the last line means.
February 20, 2024
Browsing the poetry section at Jackson Street Booksellers in Omaha’s Old Market, I came across the Alice Walker collection Her Blue Body Everything We Know: The Earthling Poems 1965-1990 Complete containing her first four books of poetry, Once (1968); Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973); Good Night, Willie Lee, I’ll See You in the Morning (1979); and Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful (1985); as well as a smattering of previously uncollected poems.
I wasn’t looking for Alice Walker’s poetry. Though I knew she wrote poetry (and essays), I thought of her first and foremost as an author of fiction (like most everyone else, I’m sure, and, like most everyone else, I too have read The Color Purple and nothing else). Fairly or not, I don’t often consider poetry by prosaists (see also: Margaret Atwood, John Updike, C.S. Lewis), thinking them dilettantes of the form and not proper poets like Carl Sandburg, Mary Oliver, David Whyte, or Walt Whitman. You may have noticed that I chose four poets who also happen to write prose (and are quite well-known for it), and so I will confess, sheepishly so, that my bias, however unsound, has run in only one direction. All of which is to say, I wasn’t looking for Alice Walker’s poetry. But I did find the subtitle, The Earthling Poems, intriguing, and it didn’t hurt that this was a first-edition hardcover in pristine condition with protective mylar—for only $10. So I bought it.
Once, published in 1968, but written several years earlier when Walker was a student in East Africa and during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College, is dominated by several group poems (by which I mean, not knowing the technical term, individual poems, often self-contained, though not always, presented each to a page, and falling under a single title). The first of these, occupying the first 47 pages, “African Images: Glimpses from a Tiger’s Back,” is the poetic version of Polaroids: immediate and superficial (in the literal, not pejorative sense) and, as is often the case with off-the-cuff snapshots, the total proves greater than the sum of its parts. Here, however, the sum is richer still, as the written word carries meaning and invites imagination that we would not gleam ourselves from images alone. These very short poems are followed by “Love” and “Karamojongs,” more very short poems, which, though grouped separately, could just have easily been included within “African Images.”
Nearly halfway through and just three poems in, we come to the book’s titular work, yet another grouping. Unlike its precedents, “Once” is no mere collection of hastily captured Polaroids. Here, Walker unveils a series of fourteen vignettes depicting life in the South during (or perhaps before) the Civil Rights era with humor, with empathy, with surprise, with anger, and with hope. From there, though there are several more poems about the South, the number of group poems decreases and the variety of subject matter increases, though is largely dominated by Walker’s, presumably, contemporaneous romantic relationship(s) back in New York.
I read the entirety of Once twice (ha) and many of its poems numerous times. With the first reading, I was underwhelmed. I think I’d held the fact that Walker was just twenty years of age (give or take) when these poems were written against her, as in, they can’t be that good because she was just a college student. And while there is a youthful optimism—perhaps naïveté—throughout, Walker is a keen, sensitive observer, whose insights reveal themselves more deeply with successive reads. She neither tells (or shows) everything nor draws conclusions, leaving plenty of space for the reader to enter into each poem. And if there is anything, at this early stage, she seems to display a mastery of, it is her use of enjambment (the running on of a thought from one line to the next without a syntactical break) combined with her selective use (and disuse) of punctuation and capitalization, to wit (from “Exercises on Themes from Life”):
If I were a patriot
I would kiss the flag
As it is,
Let us just go.
Oh, how that line As it is wonderfully renders two ways to read the poem, in turn opening the poem up to multiple interpretations. There are many such delightful moments, moments within moments, throughout. Once is an auspicious start, and I can’t wait to see how she develops as a poet on the way to her second collection, published five years later.
I wasn’t looking for Alice Walker’s poetry. Though I knew she wrote poetry (and essays), I thought of her first and foremost as an author of fiction (like most everyone else, I’m sure, and, like most everyone else, I too have read The Color Purple and nothing else). Fairly or not, I don’t often consider poetry by prosaists (see also: Margaret Atwood, John Updike, C.S. Lewis), thinking them dilettantes of the form and not proper poets like Carl Sandburg, Mary Oliver, David Whyte, or Walt Whitman. You may have noticed that I chose four poets who also happen to write prose (and are quite well-known for it), and so I will confess, sheepishly so, that my bias, however unsound, has run in only one direction. All of which is to say, I wasn’t looking for Alice Walker’s poetry. But I did find the subtitle, The Earthling Poems, intriguing, and it didn’t hurt that this was a first-edition hardcover in pristine condition with protective mylar—for only $10. So I bought it.
Once, published in 1968, but written several years earlier when Walker was a student in East Africa and during her senior year at Sarah Lawrence College, is dominated by several group poems (by which I mean, not knowing the technical term, individual poems, often self-contained, though not always, presented each to a page, and falling under a single title). The first of these, occupying the first 47 pages, “African Images: Glimpses from a Tiger’s Back,” is the poetic version of Polaroids: immediate and superficial (in the literal, not pejorative sense) and, as is often the case with off-the-cuff snapshots, the total proves greater than the sum of its parts. Here, however, the sum is richer still, as the written word carries meaning and invites imagination that we would not gleam ourselves from images alone. These very short poems are followed by “Love” and “Karamojongs,” more very short poems, which, though grouped separately, could just have easily been included within “African Images.”
Nearly halfway through and just three poems in, we come to the book’s titular work, yet another grouping. Unlike its precedents, “Once” is no mere collection of hastily captured Polaroids. Here, Walker unveils a series of fourteen vignettes depicting life in the South during (or perhaps before) the Civil Rights era with humor, with empathy, with surprise, with anger, and with hope. From there, though there are several more poems about the South, the number of group poems decreases and the variety of subject matter increases, though is largely dominated by Walker’s, presumably, contemporaneous romantic relationship(s) back in New York.
I read the entirety of Once twice (ha) and many of its poems numerous times. With the first reading, I was underwhelmed. I think I’d held the fact that Walker was just twenty years of age (give or take) when these poems were written against her, as in, they can’t be that good because she was just a college student. And while there is a youthful optimism—perhaps naïveté—throughout, Walker is a keen, sensitive observer, whose insights reveal themselves more deeply with successive reads. She neither tells (or shows) everything nor draws conclusions, leaving plenty of space for the reader to enter into each poem. And if there is anything, at this early stage, she seems to display a mastery of, it is her use of enjambment (the running on of a thought from one line to the next without a syntactical break) combined with her selective use (and disuse) of punctuation and capitalization, to wit (from “Exercises on Themes from Life”):
If I were a patriot
I would kiss the flag
As it is,
Let us just go.
Oh, how that line As it is wonderfully renders two ways to read the poem, in turn opening the poem up to multiple interpretations. There are many such delightful moments, moments within moments, throughout. Once is an auspicious start, and I can’t wait to see how she develops as a poet on the way to her second collection, published five years later.
December 3, 2019
I didn't care much for the first, extended piece, "African Images: Glimpses from a Tiger's Back" which took up a good chunk of the collection and had me feeling like this might be a serious misfire, that I might need to step back to Walker's prose. Fortunately, things picked up, even though I never could pick out a particular rational behind the consistent and oddly middle-set formatting set she went with. Her strength is in being simple yet suggestive, though oftentimes that suggestive habit struck me as maybe a lack of material to bare down on. This is her first collection though, and I'm happy to go back to poems like "To the Man in the Yellow Terry" and "On Being Asked to Leave a Place of Honor for One of Comfort."
December 25, 2020
I have to admit I do not end up liking every book I read.
I struggle with some of them. And if, by any chance, you would ask me if I could give an example, I would probably say this. I struggled going through this.
But still there are parts that I liked. Like this one:
“How I wish it could always be this way—that on mornings he cannot come himself, the sun might send me you.” (Once)
I felt, maybe, a little bit uncomfortable while I was reading this. I will never fully understand what the likes of Alice Walker had gone through in the past but perhaps, I can only empathize.
I do quite appreciate Walker sharing a detailed biography at the end of the book. To be completely honest, that part might be my favorite. Alice Walker and Maya Angelou have been women writers that I always see in my recommended reads but haven’t had the opportunity to read.
But hopefully, one day, when I understand a little bit better and I’m a little bit more mature, I would dive into their literature.
I struggle with some of them. And if, by any chance, you would ask me if I could give an example, I would probably say this. I struggled going through this.
But still there are parts that I liked. Like this one:
“How I wish it could always be this way—that on mornings he cannot come himself, the sun might send me you.” (Once)
I felt, maybe, a little bit uncomfortable while I was reading this. I will never fully understand what the likes of Alice Walker had gone through in the past but perhaps, I can only empathize.
I do quite appreciate Walker sharing a detailed biography at the end of the book. To be completely honest, that part might be my favorite. Alice Walker and Maya Angelou have been women writers that I always see in my recommended reads but haven’t had the opportunity to read.
But hopefully, one day, when I understand a little bit better and I’m a little bit more mature, I would dive into their literature.
January 4, 2021
I can't believe that this collection has hardly any reviews! I have so much love for Alive Walker, but sadly this poetry collection just didn't grab me the way I hoped it would. I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it for feel particularly connected to it. That being said my fave poem of this collection was 'To the Man in the Yellow Terry'. It's a shame that this isn't it for me, but I will probably still read her other works!
October 6, 2017
I'm afraid poetry will always seem incredibly pretentious to me. It's certainly pretentious here, in Alice Walker's collection Once. I found her poetry obnoxious to read and not very realistic—and by that I mean, it sounded as though she was trying too hard, just as poets often do to me, and it ended up backfiring. It seems I am always more frustrated with poetry than I do enjoy.
April 8, 2024
I probably don't read enough poetry, but it was interesting to get a different view of an author I admire. I prefer Alice Walker's prose, but these poems deserve to be read slowly and sat with. It's four stars on the first read, but I shall wait a few months and read them again. I think the star rating may go up then.
November 6, 2017
These poems show that brevity is not only the soul of wit, but it can also be the soul of poetry. They are the poetic equivalent of vignettes and are as powerful and relevant now as when they were first published.
July 20, 2020
Once, Alice Walker's debut poetry collection, displays all the power and force that Walker would later be famous for in her fiction. This collection focuses on her experiences living in Uganda and Kenya, her life as a Black women in the South, and her experiences with love. Walker's poetic voice is funny, biting when necessary, and undeniably clever. Her poems are a master class in delivering impact with a poet's word; she'll tell a story and then hit her readers with a particularly sharp observation or comment.
From what I could tell from my research, Walker wrote this collection while she was a senior in college, and one of her mentors showed into to a publisher. Honestly, after reading it, I can completely understand why. Walker's gifts here are extraordinary, and I cannot wait to read more of her poetry. Definitely recommended!
From what I could tell from my research, Walker wrote this collection while she was a senior in college, and one of her mentors showed into to a publisher. Honestly, after reading it, I can completely understand why. Walker's gifts here are extraordinary, and I cannot wait to read more of her poetry. Definitely recommended!
October 29, 2021
I had never read this first book of poems and found them beautiful and light pictures of Walker as a young woman opening herself up to the world. I have been meaning to reread Temple of my Familiar for awhile now and sensed seeds of these poems in that book.
July 9, 2024
These poems drip with the angst of being young, but in a lovely way. Knowing she was in her early twenties when she wrote these, I had the same sense that teachers do of watching young people learn how big and old and how wild the world really is.
August 17, 2017
It's time to re-read some early Alice Walker.
April 9, 2018
*3.5*
March 3, 2020
My favorite poem is titled "Medicine." An interesting collection of poems.
April 18, 2020
Oh Alice Walker, you feed my soul. :)
October 8, 2020
Did not speak to me.
June 15, 2021
I enjoyed this book for presenting such interesting forms of poems. The beauty immersed in the poems about Africa was specifically stunning and relaxing.
July 6, 2021
A book very much of its time, these are small, beautiful poems about loving in the midst of political struggle.
October 1, 2021
*4.5 stars*
August 3, 2022
"God gave us trees to plant / and hands and eyes to / love them."
March 6, 2024
but i tell you, love, there is still much to fear. we have only seen the first of wars
Displaying 1 - 30 of 44 reviews