Crafting raw memories into restrained and compact verse, D. M. Aderibigbe traces the history of domestic and emotional abuse against women in his family. A witnessing son, grandson, nephew, and brother, he rejects the tradition of praise songs for the honored father, refusing to offer tribute to men who dishonor their wives.
Widening his gaze to capture the moral rhythms of life in Lagos, he embraces themes of love, spirituality, poverty, compassion, sickness, and death. Aderibigbe offers both an extended elegy for his mother and poems addressed to children of the African continent, poems that speak to the past that has made them.
We salivated; slices of yam softened.
We chewed our teeth; slices of yam perished.
Mother smiled. Father arrived,
filled the room with curses;
his voice beat in our hearts,
as thunder on the walls of a building.
His empty stomach was a bowl of anger.
In a room built with our silence,
father was hitting mother.
-excerpt from ""Hungry Man"" D. M. Aderibigbe. All rights reserved.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
In the urgent, abrupt, incantational poems of D. M. Aderibigbe, an essential gesture is simile: the explicit, striving word 'like' recurs often. And in every poem Aderibigbe thinks in metaphor. In a world of difference, amid unique strokes of memory and abandonment, violence and love, that action of likeness attains spiritual force."" - Robert Pinsky
""A debut that electrifies and ignites beacons of much-needed understanding through even the darkest of days. These memorable poems twist and tumble across entire countries, while making maps of love and heartbreak. A brilliant beginning. Remember this name: Aderibigbe."" - Aimee Nezhukumatathil, contest judge
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Maße
Höhe: 226 mm
Breite: 150 mm
Dicke: 8 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-299-31984-7 (9780299319847)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
D. M. Aderibigbe is a PhD student at Florida State University. He is the author of a chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father, selected for the New Generation African Poets Series of the African Poetry Book Fund. Born and raised in Nigeria, he earned his MFA in poetry from Boston University. His poems have appeared in the African American Review, The Nation, Ninth Letter, Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and elsewhere.
Before Songs
Questions
Olumo's Face
Oedipus
New Hell
Love Story
Love
Eleos
The Beginning
Shapes of Our Future
Elegy for My Mothers
Easter Night
Last Supper
Pothos
Before Me
Sons
Songs
Ode to My Father's Childhood
City Boy
Ode to Your First Cry
Birth
Gaining Her Virginity
Art of Surviving
My Mother Remakes That Morning
Hungry Man
Tiredness
In Defense of Love
Becoming My Mother's Son
Remaking the Day
Mirror
Hospital Window
Separating from My Future
in Praise of Our Absent Father
the Cleaner
in Defense of Silence
To Be My Father
Missing
Pink
Christmas Wishes
Dancing
Ode to His Absence
Learning My History
Matriculation Day
Final Turn
After Song I
Last Call
Last Forever
Out of Water
Mother, Again
Lunch Time
That Day, in the Lobby
Our Legend
Art of Unlearning
After Song II (Recap)
Ode to My Grandmother's Mouth
A Fulfilled Childhood
Confession of a Hungry Son
Prodigal
Colors of My Childhood
Acknowledgments
