Showing results by narrator "Kwame Dawes" in All Categories

This groundbreaking Jamaican narrative poem takes on history, faith, sex, and poetry itself. As 24-hour television - belching out the swaggering voices of American hellfire preachers - competes with dancehall, slackness, and ganja for Jamaican minds, Clarice and Thalbot preach their own conflicting visions. Clarice's visions give her power; Thalbot is at the mercy of every wandering spirit. But when Clarice, under the cover of darkness, 'sins' on the beach, Thalbot alone knows of her fall. He sets out to journey to denounce the prophetess and warn the Ninevite city of its coming doom.

In Nebraska, this beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Dawes explores a theme constant in his work - the intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska’s discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape.