Wheels Kwame Dawes 9781845231422 Books
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Using the power of language to explore and discover patterns of meaning, this collection brings the lyric poem face to face with the external world—with its politics, social upheavals, and ideological complexity. Whether it is a poem about a near victim of a terrorist attack reflecting on the nature of grace, a president considering the function of art, or a Rastafarian defending his faith, the selections all seek illumination in understanding the world. They are as much about the quest for love and faith as they are about finding pathways of meaning through the current decade of wars and political and economic uncertainty.
Wheels Kwame Dawes 9781845231422 Books
On Wheels as a whole, what was said of Duppy Conquerer holds equally true: “historically conscious, political, spiritual, lyrical, and sensual all at the same time.” In Wheels, separated into five sections, Dawes takes us on a journey through reflections on the prophet Ezekiel’s visions, a visit to Ethiopia where he weaves historical background with modern political commentary, slavery in the Carolinas, several visits to an AIDS hospice in Haiti, and, finally, back “Home, Again” to Jamaica and South Carolina. Even while addressing violence, death, upheaval, and betrayal, lyricism is never far, often graphically violent and sensual: “so the sweet stench of sacrifice / can rise slowly up into the pink vulva of the sky.” Yet, most remarkable is the sensual and spiritual language that is never far from Dawes’ lips, a sort of spirituality where God is man and man is God, where the “I and I” as expressed by the Rasta (we are all one), are particularly evident in the complicitly-sensual persona poems in the third section “Thunder in the Egg.” Written on visits to an AIDS hospice in Haiti, the speaker speaks with grace and with graphic and courageous honesty through the eyes of individuals reduced to heartache, pain, and isolation. There is, in these poems, a kind of hopeful despair, inspired, always, with compassion, expressed in poems which aren’t afraid to talk of sexual union amidst prospects of death, and the toil of a people beaten down by individual life circumstances, government ineptitude, and natural disaster. Dawes writes: “Words like “beauty”/ are the artist’s hope, but / his dreams are of terror / and the testing of the light…” What beauty, terror, and light shine in these difficult, heart-wrenching poems of a poet’s love for all of humanity: “Now my tendril heart no longer / calls it ordinary madness, instead / it pumps, stays meaty, fresh / pliant, vulnerable to all sadnesses.” While addressing the political, the speaker rarely avoids the personal, and a prayer from a hospice worker in “The Handmaiden,” feels like the speaker’s own supplication to God: “Lord, have mercy on our poor unconscionable souls.” It is, in short, an important and most amazing collection of poems.Product details
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Wheels Kwame Dawes 9781845231422 Books Reviews
Poet Dawes, lends new meaning to sterile, boring attempts at the poetic arts. Not worth the time nor the money.
'Wheels' by Kwame Dawes (Peepal Tree Press, 2011) is turning out to be one of the best books of poetry I've read for a long time. This Jamaican writer's work is un-self conscious, unpretentious, does not draw attention to itself. It is accomplished work. He has made poetry out of the Caribbean history he experiences. He is a voice for the generation that came to maturity in the seventies. His poems come out of Rasta and reggae, Ethiopia and Haile Selassie; US slavery seen today from his home in South Carolina; the Haiti earthquake and the ever-present spectre of AIDS even in the dust and rubble; and his own Jamaica. The poetry is real, accessible, accomplished. While he generally follows his voice and an unobtrusive skanking, reggae line, he can also produce a sequence of 14-line sonnet-type poems dedicated to Barack Obama. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel is an enigmatic, metaphorical figure the poet connects to with his own frank prophetic and contemplative queryings. And this poet can be blunt and direct in his vision of his experiences. The AIDS poems of Haiti are testimony to this. But one can also sense a wry distancing as the poet observes the real places and real events he is trodding through. The poems on AIDS-ravaged Haiti after the earthquake are documents from a compassionate heart reaching beyond words, beyond the trauma. On the evidence of this collection, I don't think I exaggerate in saying that Dawes has become the leading, major poet of our generation. His recent Guggenheim award and various other recognitions only point to what is now very obvious. Recommended.
(John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian writer. His latest publication is "elemental new and selected poems" (Peepal Tree Press, 2008).
On Wheels as a whole, what was said of Duppy Conquerer holds equally true “historically conscious, political, spiritual, lyrical, and sensual all at the same time.” In Wheels, separated into five sections, Dawes takes us on a journey through reflections on the prophet Ezekiel’s visions, a visit to Ethiopia where he weaves historical background with modern political commentary, slavery in the Carolinas, several visits to an AIDS hospice in Haiti, and, finally, back “Home, Again” to Jamaica and South Carolina. Even while addressing violence, death, upheaval, and betrayal, lyricism is never far, often graphically violent and sensual “so the sweet stench of sacrifice / can rise slowly up into the pink vulva of the sky.” Yet, most remarkable is the sensual and spiritual language that is never far from Dawes’ lips, a sort of spirituality where God is man and man is God, where the “I and I” as expressed by the Rasta (we are all one), are particularly evident in the complicitly-sensual persona poems in the third section “Thunder in the Egg.” Written on visits to an AIDS hospice in Haiti, the speaker speaks with grace and with graphic and courageous honesty through the eyes of individuals reduced to heartache, pain, and isolation. There is, in these poems, a kind of hopeful despair, inspired, always, with compassion, expressed in poems which aren’t afraid to talk of sexual union amidst prospects of death, and the toil of a people beaten down by individual life circumstances, government ineptitude, and natural disaster. Dawes writes “Words like “beauty”/ are the artist’s hope, but / his dreams are of terror / and the testing of the light…” What beauty, terror, and light shine in these difficult, heart-wrenching poems of a poet’s love for all of humanity “Now my tendril heart no longer / calls it ordinary madness, instead / it pumps, stays meaty, fresh / pliant, vulnerable to all sadnesses.” While addressing the political, the speaker rarely avoids the personal, and a prayer from a hospice worker in “The Handmaiden,” feels like the speaker’s own supplication to God “Lord, have mercy on our poor unconscionable souls.” It is, in short, an important and most amazing collection of poems.
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