The Rinehart Frames

by Cheswayo Mphanza, Kwame Dawes (Foreword)

2021 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist 
2021 Foreword Indies Finalist
Winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry

The poems in The Rinehart Frames seek to exhaust the labyrinths of ekphrasis. By juxtaposing the character of Rinehart from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man with the film 24 Frames by Abbas Kiarostami, the poems leap into secondary histories, spaces, and languages that encompass a collective yet varied consciousness of being.

Cheswayo Mphanza’s collection questions the boundaries of diaspora and narrative through a tethering of voices and forms that infringe on monolithic categorizations of Blackness and what can be intersected with it. The poems continue the conversations of the infinite possibilities of the imagination to dabble in, with, and out of history.

Genres: Poetry

126 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2021

Reviews

[Peycho Kanev]

Although the world forgets me,
tonight and all the nights to come
I dare to speak of my darkness.
I cultivated myself where the sun gutters from the sky—
my truths are all foreknown.
I want clear days and nights and no secrets,
but also to invest the world with a clearer understanding of itself.
I know what power inhabits me—
this slight tickling, this light madness.
I am free of limitations.
I know the general outline of despair,
the web of the inner levels of the mind.
Every silent wailing could find its place in these acts.
The future contains nothing uncertain—
I rejoice that things are as they are
for I have known them all already, known them all.
Everything has an instant in which it is:
fragments of being; being or nothing; near not being.
The wheels of circumstance that grind so terribly within the mind,
the hurt this world could give.
I am here eyes half-open clinging to the thread that sews day to night.
I shall whisper heavenly labials in a world of gutturals;
I will say nothing that I feel is a lie or unproven;
I will have a voice, a color;
I will be a light thing.

[Sarah]

"It is the only genre of art that allows such an expansive, intertextual, transcendental, transnational, and transdisciplinary style in it approach. Poetry is, or should be, about breaching and reaching the possibility of language and its interwoven anguishes."

[monse]

i don’t usually rate poetry but this was simply so good & i actually also got to chat with Mphanza which was really cool! an incredible read.

[Sarah]

A whole different thing.

[Sam]

it’s like he heard someone say “great artists steal” and went “deal”

[hannah]

there's some really good stuff here but i also think i simply don't know enough about art to fully appreciate a lot of this

[Ashley : bostieslovebooks]

(Sealey Challenge Day 22)

[Kevin Catalano]

This is an incredible collection. The innovation of these poems is something I've never encountered before. It makes for an intellectual experience that was very satisfying; however, the depth of heart and richness of culture also resonate. Mphanza is a poet to watch, and this is a necessary collection.