How the End First Showed

Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-299-31984-7
Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press

Buch, Englisch, 104 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 226 mm, Gewicht: 77 g

Reihe: Wisconsin Poetry Series

Crafting raw memories into restrained and compact verse, D. M. Aderibigbe traces the history of domestic and emotional abuse against women in his family. A witnessing son, grandson, nephew, and brother, he rejects the tradition of praise songs for the honored father, refusing to offer tribute to men who dishonor their wives.

Widening his gaze to capture the moral rhythms of life in Lagos, he embraces themes of love, spirituality, poverty, compassion, sickness, and death. Aderibigbe offers both an extended elegy for his mother and poems addressed to children of the African continent, poems that speak to the past that has made them.

We salivated; slices of yam softened.

We chewed our teeth; slices of yam perished.

Mother smiled. Father arrived,

filled the room with curses;

his voice beat in our hearts,

as thunder on the walls of a building.

His empty stomach was a bowl of anger.

In a room built with our silence,

father was hitting mother.

—excerpt from ""Hungry Man"" D. M. Aderibigbe. All rights reserved.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Aderibigbe, D. M.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Before Songs
- Questions
- Olumo’s Face
- Oedipus
- New Hell
- Love Story
- Love
- Eleos
- The Beginning
- Shapes of Our Future
- Elegy for My Mothers
- Easter Night
- Last Supper
- Pothos
- Before Me
- Sons
- Songs
- Ode to My Father’s Childhood
- City Boy
- Ode to Your First Cry
- Birth
- Gaining Her Virginity
- Art of Surviving
- My Mother Remakes That Morning
- Hungry Man
- Tiredness
- In Defense of Love
- Becoming My Mother’s Son
- Remaking the Day
- Mirror
- Hospital Window
- Separating from My Future
- in Praise of Our Absent Father
- the Cleaner
- in Defense of Silence
- To Be My Father
- Missing
- Pink
- Christmas Wishes
- Dancing
- Ode to His Absence
- Learning My History
- Matriculation Day
- Final Turn
- After Song I
- Last Call
- Last Forever
- Out of Water
- Mother, Again
- Lunch Time
- That Day, in the Lobby
- Our Legend
- Art of Unlearning
- After Song II (Recap)
- Ode to My Grandmother’s Mouth
- A Fulfilled Childhood
- Confession of a Hungry Son
- Prodigal
- Colors of My Childhood
- Acknowledgments

Über Autor(innen)

D. M. Aderibigbe is a PhD student at Florida State University. He is the author of a chapbook, In Praise of Our Absent Father, selected for the New Generation African Poets Series of the African Poetry Book Fund. Born and raised in Nigeria, he earned his MFA in poetry from Boston University. His poems have appeared in the African American Review, The Nation, Ninth Letter, Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and elsewhere.