The Promise of Hope: New and Selected Poems, 1964-2013

by Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho (Introduction), Kwame Dawes (Foreword by)

Overview

Kofi Awoonor, one of Ghana's most accomplished poets, had for almost half a century committed himself to teaching, political engagement, and the literary arts. The one constant that guided and shaped his many occupations and roles in life was poetry. The Promise of Hope is a beautifully edited collection of some of Awoonor's most arresting work spanning almost fifty years.

Selected and edited by Awoonor's friend and colleague Kofi Anyidoho, himself a prominent poet and academic in Ghana, The Promise of Hope contains much of Awoonor's most recent unpublished poetry, along with many of his anthologized and classic poems. This engaging volume serves as a fitting contribution to the inaugural cohort of books in the African Poetry Book Series.

Kofi Awoonor (1935-2013) was a diplomat and a professor of comparative literature at numerous universities, including the University of Ghana. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Night of My Blood; Ride Me, Memory; The House by the Sea; and The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook. His collected poems (through 1985) were published in Until the Morning After. Kofi Anyidoho, a poet and scholar, serves on editorial boards for several journals and has been a guest editor of Matatu, a journal of African culture and society that is published in Amsterdam.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803249899
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	03/01/2014
Series:	African Poetry Book
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	880,527
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Kofi Awoonor (1935–2013) was a diplomat and a professor of comparative literature at numerous universities, including the University of Ghana. He is the author of several volumes of poetry, including Night of My Blood; Ride Me, Memory; The House by the Sea; and The Latin American and Caribbean Notebook. His collected poems (through 1985) were published in Until the Morning After. Kofi Anyidoho, a poet and scholar, serves on editorial boards for several journals and has been a guest editor of Matatu, a journal of African culture and society that is published in Amsterdam.

Table of Contents

Foreword Kwame Dawes xiii

Acknowledgments xv

In Retrospect: An Introduction Kofi Anyidoho xvii

From Herding the Lost Lambs (2013)

The Light Is On 3

The New Boy on the Block 6

Across a New Dawn 8

Songs of Abuse 11

To Feed Our People 13

To the Ancient Poets 15

Counting the Years 18

Once More 18

On the Gallows Once 19

Truth 20

What Brought Me Here? 21

What More Can I Give? 22

Those Gone Ahead 24

Up in the Garden 28

Xiansi, Pou Tou Dalla 29

I'll Raise a New Song 32

Remembrance 35

From Latin American & Caribbean Notebook (1992)

In Memoriam 41

Of Home and Sea I Already Sang 42

Of Home Once More 44

Rio de Janeiro: Fearful and Lovely City 45

Distant Home Country 49

Agra: January 21, 1989 51

Cuban Chapters 52

The Hero's Blood 53

Of Faith and Fortitude 54

The Orient Express 55

Betrayers 56

Havana, Cuba: The Free Territory of the Americas 60

A Caress 63

For Tenu and Afetsi: A Hymn 64

Of Niggerhood 69

A Death Foretold 70

The Prophecy from Iran 72

In Memoriam: Return to Kingston 73

Lover's Song 79

The Red Bright Book of History 79

At a Time Like This 81

Back with Sandino 84

Prayer 86

The Ancient Twine 88

Seatime, Another 89

Readings and Musings 91

Light Hours in Verse 92

Time Revisited 94

A Thin Echo of Time's Voice 94

"As Long As There Are Tears and Suffering, So Long Our Work Will Not Be Over," Jawaharlal Nehru" 97

The Girl that Died in Havana 97

Our Pride Alone 99

Dream-Again 101

New Rain 102

Birds on an Autumn Wire 103

Shamla Hills: Bhopal 105

Shamla Hills: Sanchi Temples 106

Childhood 108

Parting 109

From Until the Morning After (1987)

Life's Tears 113

So the World Changes 114

Life's Winds 115

Grains and Tears 116

Had Death Not Had Me in Tears 117

Act of Faith 118

I Rejoice 119

The Picture 120

For Ezeki 121

From The House by the Sea (1978)

tPart 1 Before the Journey

Poems, Fall '73 129

The Land Endures 130

Going Somehow 131

After the Exile and the Feasts 136

Some Talk of Lunar Virgins 138

Poem 139

Poetry 139

Departure and Prospect 140

When Going into Jail 143

Africa 143

Poem 144

Of Absence 144

Poem 146

Poem 147

Sequences 148

For Henoga Vinoko Akpalu 150

An American Poem 152

Another Lover's Song 155

Self-Portrait 156

Part 2 Homecoming… Poems from Prison

Homecoming 161

The Second Circle: Beginning Midnight, 5/1/76 162

On Being Told of Torture 163

The First Circle 164

Dream of Home 166

Revolution 166

To Sika on Her 11th Birthday 167

Revolution: A Chat with Ho Chi Minh's Ghost 168

Found Poem 172

Another Found Poem 174

The Place 176

Poem 176

Us 177

Love 177

Personal Note 178

Sea Time, Meaning a Pledge 179

The Will to Die 181

A Little Word 182

The Wayfarer Comes Home 184

From Ride Me, Memory (1973)

America 203

Harlem on a Winter Night 204

Long Island Sketches 204

To My Uncle Jonathan: A Song of Abuse 208

To Felicity, a Girl I Met in LA 209

Hymns of Praise, Celebration, and Prayer 210

Afro-American Beats 214

Etchings from My Mind 217

My Father's Prayer 219

My Uncle the Diviner-Chieftain 220

To Sika 221

To Those Gone Ahead 222

From Night of My Blood (1971)

I Heard a Bird Cry 227

Night of My Blood 239

Stop the Death-Cry 243

A Dirge 244

More Messages 245

At the Gates 247

The Dance 249

Do Not Handle It 250

All Men My Brothers 250

Lament of the Silent Sisters 251

Hymn To My Dumb Earth 254

They Do Not Sound for Me 268

From Rediscovery and Other Poems (1964)

My God of Songs Was Ill 271

The Sea Eats the Land at Home 272

The Cathedral 273

What Song Shall We Sing 273

We Have Found a New Land 274

The Anvil and the Hammer 274

Rediscovery 275

The Weaver Bird 276

The Purification 276

The Gone Locusts 277

Songs of Sorrow 278

From This Earth, My Brother: An Allegorical Tale of Africa (1971)

The Making of the New Nation (Chapter 2a) 283

From Comes the Voyager at Last: A Tale of Return to Africa (1992)

Festival of Oneness 289

An Epilogue by Kofi Awoonor 293

Source Acknowledgments 297

Editorial Reviews

06/02/2014
In effect the national poet of Ghana, Awoonor (1935-2013) belongs to the first generation of African writers who grew up along with their countries; his verse from the 1960s integrates modernist sparseness with traditional icons and ceremonial forms, as in "A Dirge": "Our fathers, the hippo has overturned our canoe./ We come home/ Our guns point to the earth." Awoonor became a professor of literature in Long Island; in 1975 returned to Ghana, where he was incarcerated for political reasons; and from 1984 to 1994 served as Ghana's ambassador to Brazil, to Cuba, and to the United Nations. His later verse (along with his prose, sparsely excerpted here) reflects all that experience, folding into its lines disillusion with the U.S.; determination and resistance in jail; and enthusiasm for an international revolutionary left, for "commitments that will not wait." Awoonor's sudden death—killed by terrorists who attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi—prompted tributes from across Africa and the African diaspora. His place in a tradition seems secure; the later poems may sound like public speeches, but the earlier work, towards the end of this big selection, remains valuable for its vivid attempts to make new, locally rooted forms. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

“We pay homage to Kofi Awoonor as a poet not only with a profound vision and articulation of the world, our world, but also with a gift of words that is at home in poetry, in prose, in critical literary studies, and equally in major essays about our African, our human condition.”—From the introduction by Kofi Anyidoho

Kofi Anyidoho

“A celebration of the work of one of our important world poets for readers both inside and outside Africa.”—From the foreword by Kwame Dawes

 

Kwame Dawes