word time how old is your language he asks and pauses for answers that will not come to the tongue my language of memories is buried in bone marrow spilling out in blood rich with copper salt and ancestor breath my language of touch was inherited from the first ones who tasted green, swallowed night and learned by stroke and knead to know each other my language of dance choreographed on waves and undulant meadow grasses now rests in lamp lit shadows and my language of speech is words welded and wielded round the globe a language of jazz and goobers okra and okay opening the wow of africa while hindi lies with norse and german is a bedfellow of latin a trade language english smelted by a people committed to war and domination my language bends and recreates itself claims a lineage measured across light years of knowing forgetting and learning once again devorah major From word time City Lights Books Copyright © devorah major 2025 We writers sometimes call our books our children because we gestate and give birth to them and love each of them in their own way. That said, I am actually quite pleased with my newest offspring, word time and the responses to it.
“In word time, devorah major invites us into a private symphony of thought where words bend, breathe, and remember. Each section, nouns, prepositions, interjections, pronouns, conjunctions, reveals her deep listening, her coaxing of memory, and soothsaying into conversation.
These poems move like breath through a horn, history riffing with the now, truth humming low, undeniable, alive. And when she writes, “time does not move / it is the earth that shakes,” we feel the tremor of that truth. “We are this place,” she reminds us, as spirit, rock, and wind converge while we are “rounding bustling corners banging our heads against destiny. ”do the metaphors awaken/do the verbs excite/do the ideas caress/ is there heavy breathing in the subject matter” ? Yes, yes, yes.
major’s process transforms grammar into revelation, language into rhythm, and rhythm into remembrance. word time is a resonant, living archive; history set to the pulse of the human heart.”
Lisa Marie Simmons Lago di Garda, Italy October 30, 2025
I will be having a book launch at city lights bookstore November 6th
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, California
https://citylights.com/events/devorah-major/ for more information and to register for the Zoom. In-person attendance does not require registration.
“Every line in devorah major’s word time ignites the page. A book-length scat that transforms words into a new instrument, this collection is a ‘slap snap/siren whirl/holler/electric zip’ all at once. The poems deliver spectacular images that convey the beauty and the horror of ‘undeniable american truths, ‘ and provide an antidote to the ‘enslaved curriculum.’ Each line, each poem title, delivers a resounding beat and tempo that reveal the bounty that major’s body of work, and this newest book in particular, hold. devorah major, San Francisco’s third Poet Laureate, continues to write witness and resistance, in her full power, with the keenest eye and an exacting pen.”–Leticia Hernández-Linares, author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl
and a book reading at Marcus bookstore November 16th
“devorah major writes knowing only language can hold us together. Her poems are a bridge over troubled waters. There is anger and sadness in this collection as major acknowledges the city morning blues. History is a witness to ‘the theft’ of her ancestors. word time brings the juju of salvation. major writes: time does not move / it is the earth that shakes / the sky that rushes / we who surge.This book contains the language of memories and the American truth. major’s work echoes Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.There is a spiritual honesty here that underscores her skill as a poet.”–E. Ethelbert Miller, author of the little book of e
Author Showcase at the Santa Clara City Library District Saturday December 6
The Library Life
Author Showcase: devorah major, word time, Steven Rowley, Dogs of Venice and Bari Williams, Seen Yet Unseen
- The event is being hosted by the Santa Clara County Library District, not my former employer, the Santa Clara City Library. I understand the names can be confusing.
- The event will take place at Cupertino Community Hall, 10350 Torre Avenue, Cupertino, CA 95014. This is a rented venue and not located within the library due to space constraints.
- The program will run from 10:00–11:00 AM, followed by a book signing from 11:00 AM–12:00 PM.
“Songful poems which are incantatory origin stories, which as only sublime poetry can do, remake us, make us see ourselves–ALL of us–anew. By way of the personal in the historical, the historical in the personal, as well as in cosmic contexts. With the lexicon and linguistics of love. Which is what happens over and over again when you read and reread word time, major’s wonderful new collection.”–Everett Hoagland, author of THE MUSIC: New & Selected Poems 1973-2023
Please come and support not just me but the two independent bookstores who sell the books we need to read, and the library, because the library’s doors are open to everyone.
in my now
the past hovers in front of my eyes
beacons of warning flash
oases of pleasure reflect
as its sepia tones fade
the future at my back is yet unseen
but its heat blisters my skin
its barbs tear at my clothes
and its winds thrust me forward
devorah major
From word time City Lights Books
Copyright © devorah major 2025