Full Description
Kwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica, where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992 he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall.
With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant.
Contents
Acknowledgments
I
How I Became an Apostle
Advent
The Barking Geese of Edenton
The Immigrant Contemplates Death
Fledge
Longing for the Hall of the Deaf
The Midwestern Sky
First Winter
Loneliness
Dark Season
Plain-Speaking
Novela
The Scent of the Cankerworm
Dawn
Chadron
Sandoz Revisited
The Enemy of Memory
The Poor Man's Sacrifice
Bones
Sponge
On History
II
The Epoch of Lies
Sea and Rain
Purple
Forgetting
The Quality of Light
In These Times
Sugar
"All Teeth and Smile"
Sniper
III
Half
Long Distance
Prairie
Pleasure
The Chronicler of Sorrows
July Fourth
IV
Jasmine
On Blindness
Insomniac
Bed Time
Transplant
Surviving, Again
Sancho Panza
The Messiness of Place
Bone Dust
Ambulation
Falling Away
On Picking Battles
The Exile Remembers His Sisters
Fatigue
