Underworlds

by Patrick Sylvain

In his debut English language collection, Patrick Sylvain brings forth an excavation of historical significance. In this magnificent chapbook of poems, Sylvain takes the reader on a contemporary exploration of Caribbean & Haitian histories marred by man-made and natural disasters. From the undertow of the Atlantic Ocean to the rubbles of a catastrophic earthquake, each poem is a relic, bellowing “ancestral tongues” in an attempt to “un-scab the past.” This is a book for all generations. Sylvain is a poet, writer, social critic, and photographer. Published in several scholarly and creative anthologies, journals and reviews, African American Review , Agni, Allegro Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, Anchor Magazine, Callaloo, Caribbean Writers , Transition , The Savannah Review , Dirty Chai , Ploughshares , SX Salon , Vallum Contemporary Poetry, Haiti Noir , International Journal of Language and Literature, Human Architecture, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. Sylvain was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. His academic essays are anthologized in several edited collections, “ The Idea of Rethinking Crisis and Development, ” edited by Millery Polyné; “ Politics and Power in Haiti ,” edited by Paul Sutton and Kate Quinn; and “Haiti Noir” edited by Edwidge Danticat. Sylvain received his B.A. from the University of Massachusetts, in Political Science and Social-Psychology, and earned his Ed.M. as a Conant Fellow from Harvard University Graduate School of Education; and was also a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow at Boston University Creative Writing Department where he earned his MFA. He has taught at several universities, including Brown (where is affiliated with Africana Studies), UMass/Boston (Anthropology) and Harvard (AAAS). Sylvain is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Brandeis University where he is the Shirle Dorothy Robbins Creative Writing Prize Fellow.

Genres: Poetry

46 pages, Paperback

Published July 30, 2018

About the author

Patrick Sylvain is a poet, writer, translator, and academic. He is a faculty at Brown University's Center for Laguage Studies. Sylvain has taught as a lecturer at Harvard, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and Tufts University. Additionally, Sylvain was also a lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is published in several anthologies, academic journals, books, magazines and reviews including: African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Caribbean Writers, Dirty Chai, Ploughshares, SX Salon, Haiti Noir, International Journal of Language and Literature, The Journal of Haitian Studies, The New West Indian Guide, Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America, Massachusetts Review, Human Architecture: A Sociology Journal, Poets for Haiti, Fixing Haiti and Beyond, The Butterfly's Way, Tectonic Shifts, The Best of Beacon Press, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse.

(from http://www.brown.edu/initiatives/slav...)

Reviews

[Caitlin]

Underworlds is history and poetry intertwined, a story of brutality and colonial violence stretching in a line back to Columbus, and of an island that refuses to give up. Patrick Sylvain draws a line from Columbus and the slave trade to U.S. interventions and bloody dictatorships; Underworld's pages drip with grief. But the poetry here is also hopeful and defiant and proud.

Underworld, much like Eve L. Ewing's masterful 1919 with its nuanced depiction of Chicago history, would serve well to bring colonial history to life, as it draws right from Columbus's own words, or from the sordid histories of interventions and of dictators—but it is also elegant, beautiful poetry, a road very much worth traversing.

[Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slay Prof. Sylvain I enjoyed this