Dog Woman

by Chris Abani

Chris Abani's Dog Woman is a mesmerizing, haunting, and sometimes subversive exploration of the personal and cultural politics of disempowerment and power. In these heart rousing and lyrically complex poems, the poet enacts the reconstruction of his feminized selves, and his personae struggle to re-form and transform both themselves and the difficult worlds they inhabit. At turns, earthy, enigmatic, devout, outraged, and compassionate, these elemental women's voices ring true, as they sing siren songs, dirges, and hosannas, and as they navigate into new and unknown territories of human will and endurance. Dog Woman is a daring, trailblazing, and important book; it's a vital addition to the poetry of our times.

Genres: Poetry, African Literature

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

Christopher Abani (or Chris Abani) is a Nigerian author.

He was a political prisoner in Nigeria at various times during 1985 and 1991. At times he was held in solitary confinement and he was held on death row for some time after being sentenced to death for treason.

He is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the 2001 Prince Claus Awards, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award and the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Selections of his poetry appear in the online journal Blackbird.

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Abani uses amazing explorations of form and voice(s) in this book. A particularly powerful section of the book is a meditation on the Catholic stations of the cross, and the voice(s) in relation to and around / about the stations that have been "left out" or left unheard.

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Born from a flower
Its face darkens the world
To be forgotten
The gazelle's leap before the snare
Who broke the string for me?
-- "Dark Waters (III)"

We had to invent a hate for it.
There is no way to decapitate a child tenderly
No etiquette on how to feed a man
To dogs hungry with their master's denial.

We made of it a place to live, a castle,
But there is a black flower that grows
In a field of green, and for all its emerald blaze
All you see is the coal of that flower.

Though we pretend they are not human
Our damnation is the plague that we have become
Hearts blacker than that field of flowers
And we have only this.
-- "De Casas' Aria -- A Funk in D Minor"

Her silence watches me; stoic
as a mud granary guarding a night field.
And no one else I've known died of love.
Still, this is her inheritance: This patch of sky
shredded by swallow's wings; and my art.
-- "Memoriam II"

My blood is the cry of water
unable to slake its own thirst.
-- "Elegy"

Were it not for the curve in the pillar
I wouldn't have known her.
Are you? Really? Tell me.
Voice all tears and salt, she said:
I remember nothing.
-- "Mrs. Lot"

That smell?
Kerosene on rain-wet earth.
-- "Lush"

[Dave Naz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chis Abani is truly an inspirational poet. Check out his work if you haven't already.