Sanctificum

Chris Abani

A self-described “zealot of optimism,” poet and best-selling novelist Chris Abani bravely travels the charged intersections of atrocity and love, politics and religion, loss and renewal. With language of devastating beauty and complexity, he investigates conflicted personal history and political tragedy, and how the human body fares against both.
 
A book-length sequence of linked poems, Sanctificum is Abani’s most intimate and ambitious book to date, a tour de force bringing together religious ritual, the Igbo language of his Nigerian homeland, and reggae rhythms in a complex, liturgical love song.

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ISBN: 9781556593161

Format: Paperback

from “Elephants”

1

There was this small college in the South where I read
and three white boys in the audience
in KKK outfits, stiff like lilies for a funeral.
The walk up to them was long with fear and shame and rage.
But I took the hood off one and wore it back to the stage
and through my reading to a deafening applause.
But I mostly remember how hot it was under the fabric
and how that boy’s smell filled me,
and how wet my tears were.
And Bean in the warm bed breathing softly and me cold
on the floor and writing this poem in an old notebook.
And the arrow slit of skylight lets in only a red night.
And her Gennady Aygi translations flutter by the bed
like a flock of simple white birds.
The more we promise to never leave our lovers,
the faster the horizon arrives. My lust is simpler still:
that Bean return to me every night with her gentle warmth.

About the Author

Chris Abani is an acclaimed novelist and poet. His most recent books are The Secret History of Las Vegas, The Face: Cartography of the Void, and Sanctificum. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, an Edgar Award, a USA Artists Fellowship, the PEN Beyond Margins Award, a Prince Claus Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. Born in Nigeria, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and …

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Reviews

“Abani… explores place and humor, exile and freedom with poems of experience and imagination… [he] enters the wound with a boldness that avoids nothing. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“Stunning poems.” —New Humanist

“… Profound and intimate power… As Abani walks the circuit of his stations of suffering, he affirms the sanctity of life and love, of language, remembrance, and truth.” —Booklist

“Abani sets a personal best with his latest collection… [he] beautifully amalgamates the intelligible, the ethical, and the aesthetic… His greatest success… lies in his ability to make the slightest moments enjoyable.” —Library Journal