Details

ISBN-10: 0810134624
ISBN-13: 9780810134621
Publisher: Triquarterly Books
Publish Date: 01/15/2017
Dimensions: 8.40" L, 6.10" W, 0.60" H

City of Bones: A Testament

Paperback

Price: $24.95

Overview

As if convinced that all divination of the future is somehow a re-visioning of the past, Kwame Dawes reminds us of the clairvoyance of haunting. The lyric poems in City of Bones: A Testament constitute a restless jeremiad for our times, and Dawes’s inimitable voice peoples this collection with multitudes of souls urgently and forcefully singing, shouting, groaning, and dreaming about the African diasporic present and future.

As the twentieth collection in the poet’s hallmarked career, City of Bones reaches a pinnacle, adding another chapter to the grand narrative of invention and discovery cradled in the art of empathy that has defined his prodigious body of work. Dawes’s formal mastery is matched only by the precision of his insights into what is at stake in our lives today. These poems are shot through with music from the drum to reggae to the blues to jazz to gospel, proving that Dawes is the ambassador of words and worlds.

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Reviews
"The City of Bones stands beside the light found in Claudia Rankine's Citizen. It is an urgent work of poetry that begets civic empathy, indictment, and clarity; one that stands in, but will travel well beyond, its own time. This is a major new book by a major poet." –Rebecca Gayle Howell, author of Render: An Apocalypse

"City of Bones is a poet's testament, his vision of time's past and future. Composed in a language that is highly intelligent, tightly wrought, and buoyant–the inherent lyric quality derives its swing from reggae, blues, jazz, gospel, and spoken-word traditions–it is a road map tarred in civilizational wisdom. This is an astonishingly fine book. If I were to predict a future Nobel Prize winner in literature, it would more than likely be Kwame Dawes."
–Sudeep Sen, author of EroText and editor of The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry

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Details

ISBN-10: 0810134624
ISBN-13: 9780810134621
Publisher: Triquarterly Books
Publish Date: 01/15/2017
Dimensions: 8.40" L, 6.10" W, 0.60" H
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