This hauntingly beautiful collection of poems is a disarming account of a man consumed by thoughts of home and loss.

 

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    

Kwame Dawes is Chancellor’s Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and author or editor of numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes’s most recent books include the poetry collections City of Bones: A Testament and Punto de Burro and the novel Bivouac. He is director of the African Poetry Book Fund, editor of the award-winning African Poetry Book Series, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. The winner of numerous awards for his writing and service to the literary community, Dawes was elected a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, named a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and won the prestigious Windham Campbell Award for Poetry in 2019.