Seahorses - Abayomi Animashaun

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Résumé :
The poems in Seahorses are honed as axe blades, and they deliver a witnessing blow, telling of detainment camps, exile, loss, and a silence 'worn/As coat and/Top hat.//Sorrow tucked/In the left/Breast pocket.' Animashaun's speakers are fluid, at times reprehensible, at other times eliciting deep compassion, testifying to the life of the 'sole/Black immigrant/On the cul-de-sac.' The tone of this collection is by turns apocalyptic and tender, and at times a playfulness appears, as when poems turn to Wonderland, and Oz, and a Lorca-like approach to the image emerges-- a dream 'Of goats painting/their hooves green, ' and 'Night/With a thousand yellow lights/Braids its hair/And bathes with waters/From dark village wells.' Seahorses is beautiful, disturbing, and sublime.
-- Diane Seuss...

Sommaire:
Abayomi Animashaun is an immigrant from Nigeria. He has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a PhD from the University of Kansas. His poems have appeared in such print and online journals as Poetry Ireland Review, Diode, TriQuarterly, The Cortland Review, African American Review, The Adirondack Review, Ruminate Magazine, and Versedaily. A winner of the Hudson Prize and a recipient of a grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation, Animashaun is the author of three poetry collections, Seahorses, Sailing for Ithaca, and The Giving of Pears, and editor of three anthologies, Far Villages: Welcomes Essays for New and Beginner Poets, Others Will Enter the Gates: Immigrant Poets on Poetry, Influences, and Writing in America, and Walking the Tightrope: Poetry and Prose by LGBTQ Writers from Africa (edited with Spectra, Tatenda Muranda, Irwin Iradunkunda, and Timothy Kimutai). Abayomi Animashaun is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh and a poetry editor at The Comstock Review. He lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin with his wife and children....