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I wondered as I began to read.
What is this war to me? But as soon as I looked into the faces of these poems, I cared desperately, and I knew that this war, like all wars, belongs to all of us.
As the husband stands before the wife, awaiting the verdict, weeping, she sees him as "a tree after lightning has struck. Children should be running into the woods to play and harvest the fruits, but instead we children march off to war.
The Liberian civil war was famous for its induction of child soldiers, and Wesley brings us the heartbreak of the mothers of those babes with guns and "adjustable ammunition. There was so much death, according to the poem "War Children," that the ground would no longer accept the dead: These poems, however, are not tales of despair. If the war will just end, these poems seem to say, we will grieve for a long time, but eventually the land will forgive us, the trees will grow and bloom again: They will rejoice, as Wesley describes in the first stanza of "One of These Days: There will be so much shouting, so much wailing, so much dancing.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley was born in Tugbakeh, Liberia. She and her family moved to the USA in , during the early years of Liberia's civil war.
In Before the Palm Could Bloom, Wesley writes vividly of those war years, of life in the time before, and of a future full of both uncertainty and hope. Wesley's picturesque poems of village life-and particularly her description of village life before and after the war in Tugbakeh: A Song-illustrate how much we have lost because of the chaos in our country.
Child Soldier, one of the most powerful poems in the collection-and the one from which the book's title comes-is a moving piece about real children who played chilling roles in the destruction that ultimately left over , dead. Throughout her book, Wesley writes with the authority and sensitivity of a survivor who is already thinking about the healing that must follow the violence. But not all her poems are full of sorrow and longing. They Say and Monrovia Women are timeless and humorous poems of Liberian women's experiences and perceived behavior.
Some, like Big Ma, pay tribute to people Wesley knew.
Still others uplift the spirit with plans for repatriation of Liberians from the diaspora. In the upbeat poem One of These Days, Wesley describes the great rejoicing that will take place when all the refugees return to their homeland. Homecoming, one of the last poems, is a bit more poignant in its plea: Before the Palm Could Bloom is a beautiful collection of poems that, together, presents a complex Liberia-a part we may never know again, a part we never want to relive, and much that we yearn to recreate for future generations.
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Apology from a Muslim Orphan.
Elegy in Joy [excerpt]. The word of nourishment passes through the. And water lies plainly. You can rest in the back yard under a tree.
Cup your palms around that candle dear lazy. Spells to cast to the wombs keep our ghosts outside peering into tent ***** yellowing irises and stamens strangely . The Poetry Translation Centre gives the best poems from Africa, Asia and Latin America a From the Palm of My Hand is featured in Víctor Terán Chapbook.
Your hands twitch on your lap, Not unlike the fish on a pier or the bottom Of a boat. You drink iced tea. The minutes jerk Like flies.
It's dusk, now night, And the lights in your home are on. That costs money, yellow light In the kitchen. That's thirty steps, You say to your hands, Now shaped into binoculars.
Jan 31, Toni rated it it was amazing Shelves: I was intrigued because the only poetry I knew by Wallace Stevens was 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and I knew he had written a great deal. Open Preview See a Problem? Arranged in chronological order by probable date of composition this text provides the reader the possiblility of considering the overall arc of Stevens' career. The surreal imagery of this utter blank vacuous space in the moments immediately after death, with this distant, all to vivid palm rising out of eternity gives me a strange sense of serenity. My Love My love, My love Come and go away with me to the secret place of the heart A place only you can enter and be mine forever Love is the greatest thing you can give to another I give my love to you. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon.
You could raise them to your eyes: You were a fool in school, now look at you. You're a giant among cotton plants. Now you see your oldest boy, also running. Papa, he says, it's time to come in. You pull him into your lap And ask, What's forty times nine?