Nekhau

by Rico Craig

These are poems of love and loss, they imagine a world where hawks fly from the arms of lovers and disappear into a dying world, where golden fish rise from rivers and tangle themselves in hair, where molecules and mist carry messages of love through cites. In this collection, beginnings and endings slice across each other, modern and mythic intertwine, the everyday is stirred into a world of metaphor and incantation. Individual poems chime off each other, creating strands of narrative which circle the collection's central symbol, the nekhau - small fish-shaped amulets crafted by ancient Egyptians and plaited through the hair of loved ones to ward off drowning. In a contemporary and at times imaginary world, the poems become nekhau, articulating the fears and dangers underlying love in order to subdue them. In doing so the poems transform many tropes of love poetry, repositioning them in contexts both everyday and otherworldly. The bodies in these poems fight against the mortality of love, they borrow lore and build new myths as a way to protect love's fragility. Glistening with musicality and precision, these poems twist and shimmer like fish leaping toward the fears that have shaped them.

100 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2022

Reviews

[poeticool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rico Craig is a beautiful writer, and an even greater human being. i recently went to a poetry slam where he was the feature poet. the poems in Nekhau is all about love, the good, as well as the hardest parts about love. being in love, having love for those around you, a place, and just seeing love in everything that is. his humility and genuine soul is what radiates, i hope he knows his words is like a little love letter to those lucky enough to read it.

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. To say this is a collection of poems about love is perhaps the simplest and most straightforward thing one can say, but it is love in its most organic, dynamic and otherworldly expression and more. Timeless and finite. Bound with the spirit of nekhau, fish-shaped amulets fashioned by the ancient Egyptians to protect loved ones, this is an ever-shifting wonder of words that will take a little time to swim in before a longer reflection is possible.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/10/02/gi...