The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn
1st Edition
Published on 1. September 2018
90 pages
978-1-4962-1284-9 (ISBN)
Description
Tanella Boni is a major African poet, and this book, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, is her first full collection to be translated into English. These poems wrestle with the ethnic violence and civil war that dominated life in West Africa's Ivory Coast in the first decade of the new millennium. Boni maps these events onto a mythic topography where people live among their ancestors and are subject to the whims of the powerful, who are at once magical and all too petty. The elements-the sun, the wind, the water-are animated as independent forces, beyond simile or metaphor. Words, too, are elemental, and the poet is present in the landscape-"during these times / I searched for the letters / for the perfect word." Boni affirms her desire for hope in the face of ethno-cultural and state violence although she acknowledges that desiring to hope and hoping are not the same.
Reviews / Votes
"'The dawn counted its nomadic steps / to the border.' Tanella Boni's translucent, extraordinary poems transform usually ineffable explorations of war, violence, and the ever-tangled exit out of these realities, into meticulous experiences that--while rendered elegantly--nevertheless leave the reader face to face with the horror of our own humanity. Boni not only expands poetry's possibilities ('ordinary life / between routine and rupture'), but in searing, unique, meticulous language, her work challenges the limit of writing itself."-Robin Coste Lewis, author of Voyage of the Sable Venus, winner of the National Book AwardMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Lincoln
United States
Illustrations
none
File size
2,31 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4962-1284-9 (9781496212849)
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 Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Tanella Boni
The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn
Book
09/2018
University of Nebraska Press
€17.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Tanella Boni is an Ivorian poet, novelist, and professor of philosophy at the University FElix HouphouEt-Boigny, formerly the University of Abidjan (Cocody). She has published numerous critical and literary works in French and won many literary awards, including the 2009 Antonio Viccaro International Poetry Prize from UNESCO for her body of work. Todd Fredson is the author of the poetry collections The Crucifix-Blocks and Century Worm and has translated two poetry collections by JosuE GuEbo, including Think of Lampedusa (Nebraska, 2017). HonorEe Fanonne Jeffers is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and the author of The Gospel of Barbecue.
