Direct and unadorned poetry; deeply political.

A work that's shaped by the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and intimate personal reckoning. The poems move between public speech and private address, holding anger, tenderness, clarity, and restraint in equal measure.

Once reads as an early articulation of themes that would later define Walker’s prose: a personal moral clarity that shows her interpretation of structural injustice.

A slim, serious collection that rewards careful reading.