The World Is Round

“A poem, when it works, is a rolling realization of ideas and emotion that takes you somewhere you’ve never been. Nikky Finney does that for me. Every now and then, I find myself in a room with a stage and there she is, reading poems, pulling me out of myself and bringing me home. The World Is Round opens all of my doors and windows and airs me out with a cold and truthful wind.” —Walter Mosley

"Finney probes the notion of identity to suggest that it is a type of bricolage, culled from national events, ancient stories, and everyday living. She moves with equal ease between the words of racist senators to savvy blues singers, from an elephant ride in a local parking lot to an hours-long shopping spree at the Salvation Army Thrift Store with her grandmother, and with each story reveals a little more about what makes her so sure that the world will be all right, that the righteous fight is still raging." —Camille-Yvette Welsch, Foreword Reviews