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Read Chris Abani. Watch and listen to him read on YouTube. Watch and listen to him read in person if you can. This is a writer who matters. Poetry or prose, his use of language is masterful, his imagination and capacity for empathy apparently boundless. This book of poems is a fine place to make his acquaintance. Read it and you will read more of his work.
yes, yes. love everything this man writes.
I love Chris Abani.
stunning
This is my favorite among Abani’s published poetry collections and I think it might be because it is completely accessible. One doesn’t have to know anything about Chris Abani to understand the language and heartache and courage. “Om” appears first and has seven parts on five pages. I take one phrase from each: "I never told anyone that every sliver of orange I atewas preceded by words from high mass…"and"The dog’s black tongue was more terrifying than its teeth."and"Sorrow lodged like a splinte...
I am a zealot for optimism.- from "Pilgrimage" I read Abani's short bio in the wonderful "The Face" series (The Face: Cartography of the Void) last year, and was very intrigued to read more of his writing. This National Poetry Month is the perfect time for that.Abani writes with such grace and understanding. He has a deep social consciousness and awareness (and was a political prisoner in Nigeria, imprisoned for his writings and criticisms of the government), and this permeates his poems. Sancti...
Wow. Poetry as craft rather than spewed fridge magnets or obtuse navel gazing. Meaningful, riveting, relevant.
top 10
This 2010 volume of poetry is by the Nigerian writer Abani. It is a series oflinked sections with titles like Om, Divination, Revenant, Descent. There areLatin mass quotatins interspersed and it is an exploration of God and where thatis in relation to the international crises and ravage. It is basically a lovepoem that also includes tragedy. An anguished search for the divine, howevermuch he describes himself as a "zealot of optimism."
I have always loved Abani's work. But this. But this. Holy, holy, holy.And fun to see names in the poem I know.
2021 Reading Challenge: owned but unread
I recently read and enjoyed Chris Abani’s essay The Face: Cartography of the Void and decided to give his other writing a chance. I settled on Sanctificum which touches on similar themes as his autobiographical essay. In it, Abani navigates the trauma of his past incarceration, his relationship to his parents and his childhood memories against the backdrop of his current mundane life in the US. The violence of the world and his own past haunt him, but he remains a confessed optimist, often prone...
I haven't reread many books, but I think this one I will definitely go back to. If not for anything else, for the way the lines sound in my mouth. Abani pours pain and delight into eachother so much that it startled me at random intervals as I read the poems. There's a lot of depth and subtlety that I cherish in this collection.
Haunting verse by a poet who spans several continents and cultures, and handles them all with grace. By an African roadside, a womanmore skeleton than flesh squats.Death wears down her resistance.The sun tries to be merciful. Abani's spare, unflinching verse helps you see these several worlds in new ways. I don't know why I singin languages I cannot understand.Fast-moving trains draw time ahead andthen there is the sea and the blue kite of horizon;a perfect chalice for nightand the communion sli...
Powerful juxtaposition of image and utterance. So lovely--the pacing in this series is deft, the voice is intimate and speaks of family life, theological disillusionment, and political violence at once, movingly and successfully. Poems about Nigeria, Palestine, the U.S., the problems of ever knowing/reaching the memory of one's father and mother, of love and grief--and such terrific use of metaphor. These poems will break you open.
Beautiful and elegiac and powerful. I heard him at a reading for Hamline's Water-Stone Summer Workshop and have been looking forward to this read since then. Jotted down so many lines I wanted to remember. Loved it all.
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/3734498
Excellent poetry.
