Hands Washing Water
(Copper Canyon Press - out
now!)
These imaginative new poems remind me both of James
Baldwin who said “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions
which have been hidden by the answers” and of Maria Rainer
Rilke who said “we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;/ it
has inner light, even from a distance.” These poems teach
that nothing buried is dead; they breathe in the moment between
Question and Answer; between Place and Displacement, and know, as
one poem ends that “the moment is fire.” Pliant and
uncompromising, intellectual and organic, these brilliant poems
are made of fire. I was enlightened by the flame and consumed by
it.
- Terrance Hayes, author of Hip Logic and Wind In A Box
In a poem titled “Aphasia,” Chris Abani
reminds us that even as we live in a time of lost language—of
meaningless sound bites and empty slogans—it is the poet’s
job to find words that can, as Keats put it, sharpen one’s
vision into the heart and nature of man.The poems in Hands Washing
Water do just that. Throughout this new collection, Abani’s
unflinching vision shows us not only love and sorrow but also atrocity
and the possibility of redemption, the line that pulls us from despair
to salvation.
- Natasha Trethewey, author of Native
Guard and Belloq's Ophelia.
This book holds the keys to the universe. Abani
compresses space,
time, language, matter, history and consciousness. From suffering
to
desire, from war to love. Each one a hinge toward enlightenment.
Each
one a tender mirror that turns into liquid sunlight in your hands.
- Juan Felipe Herrera author of Giraffe
On Fire and Crash Boom Love
In Abani's fourth volume (after Dog Woman), he explores place and
humor, exile and freedom with poems of experience and imagination...Abani
enters the wound with a boldness that avoids nothing. Highly recommended.
Library Journal |
