The site of the ruined ancestral home of Kwame Dawes's family, in one of the earliest post-slavery free villages in Jamaica, Sturge Town is at once a place of myth and, for Dawes, a metaphor of the journeying that has taken him from Ghana, through Jamaica, and to the United States. The poet ranges through time, pursued by a keen sense of mortality, and engages in an intimate dialogue with the reader-serious, confessional, alarmed, and sometimes teasing. Metrically careful and sonorous, these poems engage in a personal dialogue with the reader, serious, confessional, alarmed and sometimes teasing. They create highly visualized spaces, observed, remembered, imagined, the scenes of both outward and inner journeys. Whether finding beauty in the quotidian or taking astonishing imaginative leaps, these poems speak movingly of self-reflection, family crises, loss, transcendence, the shattering realities of political engagement, and an unremitting investment in the vivid indeterminacy of poetry.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Sturge Town is named for one of the earliest free villages in Jamaica, Dawes's family home. From this psychogeographic starting point...unspools a richly intelligent, deeply descriptive exploration of home and identity...This personal odyssey becomes a universal journey." -- Fiona Sampson - The Guardian "Kwame Dawes is an exquisite poet, a profound poet, a quiet poet, a great poet." -- Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other "Every poem in this collection seems to be the best of what it tries to be, whether an observation, anthropological recovery, ode, elegy, or even an ars poetica...This verse collection is the twenty-first for Dawes, and the eighty-six poems here demonstrate a full, masterful command of his art." -- Scott LaMascus - World Literature Today "Like one of his heroes, Bob Marley, Dawes changes not just the way readers look at the world but the lens through which they see reality. His is a transcendent vision, filled with tenderness, curiosity, and compassion for what has been and what might be." -- Herman Sutter - Library Journal (starred review) "Wise and generous, this illustrates a poetic journey toward self-understanding." -- Publishers Weekly
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Fadenheftung
Gewebe-Einband
Maße
Höhe: 219 mm
Breite: 151 mm
Dicke: 20 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-324-07631-5 (9781324076315)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Kwame Dawes, the current poet laureate of Jamaica, is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His work has received international acclaim. He is a professor of Literary Arts at Brown and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Autor*in
Brown University
