Poetic Empowerment – Grace LaJoy

Poetic Empowerment
Grace LaJoy
IGL Publishing 2008
www.gracelajoy.com

Earlier TBGB reviewed Songs by Grace LaJoy, entrepreneur Dr. Grace LaJoy Henderson’s musical collaboration with gospel artist Zenobia Smith. Poetic Empowerment is LaJoy’s contribution to the spoken word category.

Just as Songs gave listeners a sampling of LaJoy’s songwriting, the fifteen passages on Poetic Empowerment give the listener a sampling of the good doctor’s poetry. Each passage is supported by a light, ambient jazz soundtrack led by piano, guitar or electronic keyboard. Each is crafted to fit the mood of the individual poetic work.

Topics LaJoy explores on Poetic Empowerment vary from the challenges of good parenting to finding lasting love partnerships to temptation and its fallout. All of LaJoy’s musings, calmly and gently recited by the author herself, are clothed in solutions based firmly on unwavering faith and old-fashioned common sense. Her poetic cadence and rhymes are as uncomplicated as a greeting card – you won’t have to listen twice to determine the meaning – and meant to guide daily living.

LaJoy injects tongue-in-cheek humor on “Don’t Leave Your Spouse for Me,” a passage that warns frustrated lovers/spouses that not only is the grass not greener on the other side, it is also pretty much the same grass. The poet’s deepest foray into philosophy is “Anxiety vs. Humility,” a lesson destined for posting on the office cubicle.

For those who want to explore LaJoy’s work further, some (possibly all) of the poems on the CD come from her books, including He’s Worth It, The Bad Butt Kids and More Than Mere Words: Poetry That Ministers!.

Two of Five Stars