Death Does Not End at the Sea: The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Autor Gbenga Adesinaen Limba Engleză Paperback – sep 2025
Winner of the Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
In Gbenga Adesina’s groundbreaking debut book of poems, a defiant and wise exploration of exile, voyages, and spiritual odysseys, we encounter figures embarking on journeys haunted by history—a son keeps dreaming he carried his dead father across the sea; a young Black father, tired of fear and breathlessness, travels with his son in search of the ghost of James Baldwin—to Paris, the south of France, Turkey, and Senegal to investigate his ancestral roots; and finally, a group of immigrants on small boats in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea sing in order not to drown, in a stunning sequence that invokes the middle passage. In a lyrical voice at once new and surprisingly ancient, Adesina’s Death Does Not End at the Sea explores the complexity of elusive citizenship, an immigrant’s brokenhearted prayer for a new beginning, a chorus of elegies, and a cosmic love song between the living and the dead.
Din seria The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
-
Preț: 87.76 lei -
Preț: 87.76 lei -
Preț: 87.76 lei -
Preț: 87.36 lei -
Preț: 83.18 lei -
Preț: 88.13 lei -
Preț: 88.13 lei -
Preț: 96.68 lei -
Preț: 87.57 lei -
Preț: 87.76 lei -
Preț: 98.82 lei -
Preț: 89.53 lei -
Preț: 87.36 lei -
Preț: 90.32 lei -
Preț: 87.76 lei -
Preț: 87.36 lei -
Preț: 88.36 lei -
Preț: 87.36 lei -
Preț: 89.75 lei
Preț: 91.72 lei
Nou
Puncte Express: 138
Preț estimativ în valută:
16.23€ • 18.93$ • 14.25£
16.23€ • 18.93$ • 14.25£
Carte disponibilă
Livrare economică 26 decembrie 25 - 09 ianuarie 26
Livrare express 11-17 decembrie pentru 38.18 lei
Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76
Specificații
ISBN-13: 9781496244772
ISBN-10: 149624477X
Pagini: 114
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 9 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Locul publicării:United States
ISBN-10: 149624477X
Pagini: 114
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 9 mm
Greutate: 0.23 kg
Editura: Nebraska
Colecția University of Nebraska Press
Seria The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Locul publicării:United States
Notă biografică
Gbenga Adesina, a Nigerian poet and essayist, is the inaugural Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Black and Diasporic Poetry at the Furious Flower Poetry Center, James Madison University. He received his Masters in Fine Arts from New York University, where he was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. He is the cofounder and editor of A Long House, a journal of diasporic art, thought, and literature. He has won multiple fellowships, and his poems have appeared in the Paris Review, Harvard Review, Guernica, Narrative, Yale Review, The Best American Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.
Extras
Glory
Glory of plums, femur of Glory. Glory of ferns
on a dark platter.
Glory of willows, Glory of Stag beetles Glory of the long obedience
of the kingfisher.
Glory of waterbirds, Glory
of thirst.
Glory of the Latin
of the dead and their grammar composed entirely of decay.
Glory of the eyes of my father which, when he died, closed
inside his grave,
and opened even more brightly inside me.
Glory of dark horses
running furiously
inside their own
dark horses.
I CarrIed My Father Across the Sea
He was a child. He was dead.
He was the shaft of a long- tailed astrapia. He was a forest
of bruise. He wore a door on his face.
He wore the black suit
of his wedding. The square pocket
was still full of his vows.
He was light to carry,
his burdens and vows had bled out of him.
He was heavy
with the responsibility of the dead.
What sort of a son
leaves his father
chained to fatherhood?
I lifted and propped him up with my frame.
I measured the length of him with my length.
The feet stuck in sea sand, his weak knees,
his arms gripped my sides.
As the currents rose, the collar on his broken neck
flared into a float.
The gash the surgeon’s knife left on his head
became a halo, it signaled in the dark.
I put my nose to his nose.
I put my finger in his mouth.
I tied his iv tubes, now a human gill, around our waists
and swam in the vein
of the water.
“Look,” a sphinx in the waves said.
“A son carries a father.”
Death is not silence.
It is where I hear you most clearly.
What sort of a son
leaves his father’s body
chained to the dark grievance inside the earth?
I carried my father on my back.
I felt the bracing inside his afterlife heart
on the skin of my spine.
He wore his face as a door
he promised to open to me.
He bled
out his vows.
The People's History of 1998
France won the World Cup.
Our dark goggled dictator died from eating
a poisoned red apple
though everyone knew it was the cia.
We lived miles from the Atlantic.
We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask
of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waiting for the kingdom of God, sat on a throne in his dark
room, translating Dante.
The Galileo space probe revealed
there was an entire ocean hiding beneath a sheet
of ice in Jupiter’s moon.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve
and wanted vengeance.
Elsewhere a desert caught fire.
We got a plastic green turtle and named it Sir
Desmond Tutu.
A snake entered our house through the drain
and like any good son, I ran
and hid under the bed.
Glory of plums, femur of Glory. Glory of ferns
on a dark platter.
Glory of willows, Glory of Stag beetles Glory of the long obedience
of the kingfisher.
Glory of waterbirds, Glory
of thirst.
Glory of the Latin
of the dead and their grammar composed entirely of decay.
Glory of the eyes of my father which, when he died, closed
inside his grave,
and opened even more brightly inside me.
Glory of dark horses
running furiously
inside their own
dark horses.
I CarrIed My Father Across the Sea
He was a child. He was dead.
He was the shaft of a long- tailed astrapia. He was a forest
of bruise. He wore a door on his face.
He wore the black suit
of his wedding. The square pocket
was still full of his vows.
He was light to carry,
his burdens and vows had bled out of him.
He was heavy
with the responsibility of the dead.
What sort of a son
leaves his father
chained to fatherhood?
I lifted and propped him up with my frame.
I measured the length of him with my length.
The feet stuck in sea sand, his weak knees,
his arms gripped my sides.
As the currents rose, the collar on his broken neck
flared into a float.
The gash the surgeon’s knife left on his head
became a halo, it signaled in the dark.
I put my nose to his nose.
I put my finger in his mouth.
I tied his iv tubes, now a human gill, around our waists
and swam in the vein
of the water.
“Look,” a sphinx in the waves said.
“A son carries a father.”
Death is not silence.
It is where I hear you most clearly.
What sort of a son
leaves his father’s body
chained to the dark grievance inside the earth?
I carried my father on my back.
I felt the bracing inside his afterlife heart
on the skin of my spine.
He wore his face as a door
he promised to open to me.
He bled
out his vows.
The People's History of 1998
France won the World Cup.
Our dark goggled dictator died from eating
a poisoned red apple
though everyone knew it was the cia.
We lived miles from the Atlantic.
We watched Dr. Dolittle, Titanic, The Mask
of Zorro. Our grandfather, purblind and waiting for the kingdom of God, sat on a throne in his dark
room, translating Dante.
The Galileo space probe revealed
there was an entire ocean hiding beneath a sheet
of ice in Jupiter’s moon.
The Yangtze River in China lost its nerve
and wanted vengeance.
Elsewhere a desert caught fire.
We got a plastic green turtle and named it Sir
Desmond Tutu.
A snake entered our house through the drain
and like any good son, I ran
and hid under the bed.
Cuprins
Glory
I
I Carried My Father Across The Sea
The People's History of 1998
The Wedding
Surrender
In Search of James Baldwin in Paris (I-IV)
Brief History
The Lovers of Modena
Coma: A Sequence
Envoy to the South of France
II
Death Does Not End at The Sea: A Sequence
III
In Search of James Baldwin in Istanbul (I-III)
All of the Lights
Citizen
116th Street
Paradise
Man Radiating Happiness
In Search of James Baldwin in Senegal (I-II)
Vows
Vanishing
Praise
Gorée
Envoy to the South of France
Elegy of Hands
Acknowledgments
I
I Carried My Father Across The Sea
The People's History of 1998
The Wedding
Surrender
In Search of James Baldwin in Paris (I-IV)
Brief History
The Lovers of Modena
Coma: A Sequence
Envoy to the South of France
II
Death Does Not End at The Sea: A Sequence
III
In Search of James Baldwin in Istanbul (I-III)
All of the Lights
Citizen
116th Street
Paradise
Man Radiating Happiness
In Search of James Baldwin in Senegal (I-II)
Vows
Vanishing
Praise
Gorée
Envoy to the South of France
Elegy of Hands
Acknowledgments
Recenzii
“Death Does Not End at the Sea is more than a great first book, it’s a mature reworking of contemporary elegy. Gbenga Adesina reconfigures the loss/ghost of his father into odes celebrating vulnerability and personality—as well as Fela Kuti in Versace and a globetrotting James Baldwin. The tender, scrutinizing spirit of Baldwin guides these beautiful meditations on the nature of love and grief. Death Does Not End at the Sea is more than a debut, it’s a revelation.”—Terrance Hayes author of Lighthead, winner of the National Book Award for Poetry
“In Death Does Not End at the Sea, Gbenga Adesina carries us into startlingly capacious configurations of time and grief and kinship. Sublime, lucid, unforgettable. It is a gift to live to be touched by Adesina’s exquisite music.” —Aracelis Girmay, Winner of the Whiting Award and Knight Family Professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University.
“Gbenga Adesina’s Death Does Not End at the Sea is a requiem for kinship, familial bonds, tethered histories, and splintered branches that always remember their roots. Adesina bridges memory both personal and collective with the migratory movements of global Black life. What results is a poetry in witness and celebration, a tenderness and veneration, a welcome song in our dawn!”—Matthew Shenoda, author of Tahrir Suite: Poems and The Way of the Earth
“Death Does Not End at the Sea is a collection from a poet who has matured in voice and craft. Every line quivers with a deft music. The layering of meaning, philosophy, hope, grief, rebirth, ethical questioning, and song is unsurpassed. A major talent and an important voice, Gbenga Adesina has earned every victory in this book, every accolade it will earn, and every moment of luminosity, of which there are many. In this breathtaking work we encounter a poet who carries this tradition with an easy grace. Beautiful.”—Chris Abani, author of Smoking the Bible
Descriere
Gbenga Adesina’s stunning debut book of poems explores the complexity of elusive citizenship and offers the reader an immigrant’s brokenhearted prayer for a new beginning, a chorus of elegies, and a cosmic love song between the living and the dead.