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Smoking the Bible: Poems
Smoking the Bible is an arresting collection of poems thick with feeling, shaped by Chris Abani’s astounding command of form and metaphor. These poems reveal the personal story of two brothers—one elegizing the other—and the larger story of a man in exile: exile of geography, culture, and memory. What we experience in this emotionally generous collection is a deep spiritual reckoning that draws on ancient African traditions of belief, and an intellectual vivacity drawing on various wisdom literatures and traditions. Abani illustrates the connective geography between harm, regret, and release, as poems move through landscapes of Nigeria, the Midwestern United States, adulthood, and childhood. One has the sense of entering a whole and complex world of the imagination in reading this collection. There is no artifice here, no affectation; and these poems are a study in the very grace of image.
- GenresPoetry
62 pages, Paperback
First published May 17, 2022
13 people are currently reading
234 people want to read
About the author
Chris Abani
62 books282 followersChristopher 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
October 19, 2022
“The Bible is heavy with vengeance.
And so we smoke Father’s Bible.”
Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani is a book that begins with the loss of his brother to cancer, so it’s about brotherhood, though it turns into a book he needed to write about his Nigerian (Igbo) father, whom “he forgives but doesn’t forget” for the abuse of his family, including Abani’s mother. It’s a book that draws on conventional poetic tropes such as fire, water, air, stone, but also has surprising images such as the title image, where Abani and his brother ritually, metaphorically, “smoke” passages from the Bible. Raised a devout Catholic, but also the victim of serious violence--caning was an accepted form of punishment of children in his native Nigeria, but there’s other violence, too--Abani faces his past and touches on what it is to be, in the US, in exile.
Abani is in exile, living in the midwest--in Evanston, close to me--from his family, but he’s also a Nigerian immigrant, which is to say he is black and not at home here in his blackness. The poems are linked in a kind of song cycle, an elegy for his brother, but also his mother, but even, in a way, his father.
"The point of a pen opens a hole into a soul's dereliction. The search for the right word bores through the stone."
"When the doctor said Terminal
You were silent and I set off. . ."
"I fold an origami bird, think of hand-rolled cigarettes
Made from Bible pages
Suddenly given flight by flame, egrets
Immolated in the burning."
"My skin is prophecy."
"Nothing outlasts the arc of the heart."
". . . a dove on the verge of startle . . ."
One poem title: How to Write a Love Letter to Your Brother.
Once as an altar boy his robe caught fire and his brother doused the flames with Holy Water.
“You tear Psalm 23 from Father’s leather-bound Bible,
roll it. Silently I recite, The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not--
You consider the scroll and with the match and flame
already licking the edge of the paper, you ask if I think
God remembers my name.”
And so we smoke Father’s Bible.”
Smoking the Bible by Chris Abani is a book that begins with the loss of his brother to cancer, so it’s about brotherhood, though it turns into a book he needed to write about his Nigerian (Igbo) father, whom “he forgives but doesn’t forget” for the abuse of his family, including Abani’s mother. It’s a book that draws on conventional poetic tropes such as fire, water, air, stone, but also has surprising images such as the title image, where Abani and his brother ritually, metaphorically, “smoke” passages from the Bible. Raised a devout Catholic, but also the victim of serious violence--caning was an accepted form of punishment of children in his native Nigeria, but there’s other violence, too--Abani faces his past and touches on what it is to be, in the US, in exile.
Abani is in exile, living in the midwest--in Evanston, close to me--from his family, but he’s also a Nigerian immigrant, which is to say he is black and not at home here in his blackness. The poems are linked in a kind of song cycle, an elegy for his brother, but also his mother, but even, in a way, his father.
"The point of a pen opens a hole into a soul's dereliction. The search for the right word bores through the stone."
"When the doctor said Terminal
You were silent and I set off. . ."
"I fold an origami bird, think of hand-rolled cigarettes
Made from Bible pages
Suddenly given flight by flame, egrets
Immolated in the burning."
"My skin is prophecy."
"Nothing outlasts the arc of the heart."
". . . a dove on the verge of startle . . ."
One poem title: How to Write a Love Letter to Your Brother.
Once as an altar boy his robe caught fire and his brother doused the flames with Holy Water.
“You tear Psalm 23 from Father’s leather-bound Bible,
roll it. Silently I recite, The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not--
You consider the scroll and with the match and flame
already licking the edge of the paper, you ask if I think
God remembers my name.”
August 5, 2022
Chris Abani writes of a brother, a father, a mother, all dead; of a homeland, long since left; of memories, thick and pungent, like the smoke from herbs wrapped in pages torn from the Bible and smoked, as young boys will do, emulating the men around them.
You tear Psalm 23 from Father's leather-bound Bible,
roll it. Silently I recite, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not—
You consider the scroll and with the match and flame
already licking the edge of the paper, you ask if I think
God remembers my name.
Abani, originally from Nigeria and now an English professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, writes with a cadence that is both soothing and reverent, like a hymn. He is a natural storyteller and his images have a solidity and specificity that is both deeply intimate and generously universal.
Everywhere the snow and by a roadside,
a blue phone next to a tilting stop sign
In the Bible there are
500 verses on prayer, 500 verses on faith,
2,000 verses on money and possessions,
1,214 violent or cruel verses, a liturgical math,
Quran means that which is read.
This collection is a gracious meditation on grief and forgiveness, on faith and memory, and change. Novelist, poet, essayist Chris Abani is one of our greatest contemporary writers.
Love is a figure of speech, but also a thing real
as a stone baking in the relentless sun.
You tear Psalm 23 from Father's leather-bound Bible,
roll it. Silently I recite, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not—
You consider the scroll and with the match and flame
already licking the edge of the paper, you ask if I think
God remembers my name.
Abani, originally from Nigeria and now an English professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, writes with a cadence that is both soothing and reverent, like a hymn. He is a natural storyteller and his images have a solidity and specificity that is both deeply intimate and generously universal.
Everywhere the snow and by a roadside,
a blue phone next to a tilting stop sign
In the Bible there are
500 verses on prayer, 500 verses on faith,
2,000 verses on money and possessions,
1,214 violent or cruel verses, a liturgical math,
Quran means that which is read.
This collection is a gracious meditation on grief and forgiveness, on faith and memory, and change. Novelist, poet, essayist Chris Abani is one of our greatest contemporary writers.
Love is a figure of speech, but also a thing real
as a stone baking in the relentless sun.
August 30, 2022
My 4th book by Abani, and this one was stunning, just as his earlier works.
Deeply personal in tone - elegies and memories about his brother, through his cancer treatment and death. Father/son estrangements, memories of mother, biblical and religious imagery, Nigerian childhood and exiled existence, Igbo heritage and language.
Deeply personal in tone - elegies and memories about his brother, through his cancer treatment and death. Father/son estrangements, memories of mother, biblical and religious imagery, Nigerian childhood and exiled existence, Igbo heritage and language.
October 4, 2022
Quiet, strong, beautiful, brave, unflinching poems about death and dying, love and violence, displacement and home—centered around the narrator’s brother’s illness and death from cancer, and also touching on domestic violence, colonialism, and migration. Abani’s verses are both realistic and mystical, encompassing a wide and meditative worldview grounded by focused attention on everyday details.
April 10, 2024
gives you chills
December 16, 2022
My first encounter with Chris Abani was in non-fiction prose, and I really enjoyed it. When I learned he was a poet, I was even more excited to read his poetry as his prose was lyrical, and made it evident that a poetic mind was at work.
I’m glad I finally got to read Abani’s poetry. While it didn’t resonate with me as much as his prose, there’s a considerable depth of pain, connection, love, loss, and relationships explored in these poems. Permeating throughout this collection are reflections on his relationships with his mother, father, and brother, who are all dead and brought to the page in Abani’s memories, present and in the aftermath of their deaths. His relationship with religion, life, and death are also threads layered into the various poems.
Overall, I definitely like his prose work better but I look forward to exploring more of Abani’s work in the future.
I’m glad I finally got to read Abani’s poetry. While it didn’t resonate with me as much as his prose, there’s a considerable depth of pain, connection, love, loss, and relationships explored in these poems. Permeating throughout this collection are reflections on his relationships with his mother, father, and brother, who are all dead and brought to the page in Abani’s memories, present and in the aftermath of their deaths. His relationship with religion, life, and death are also threads layered into the various poems.
Overall, I definitely like his prose work better but I look forward to exploring more of Abani’s work in the future.
May 29, 2024
excellent
December 22, 2025
was very very surprised to have enjoyed this book so much. great poet. has a way of painting and immersing you into his body and world with words.
December 3, 2025
To come to self, to kin, is to rip away another, separate,
tear. Train snaking track, snaking thoughts --
window as page, margin as frame, what is kept within,
what slips away. From beyond the willow's lazy bow
into river, beyond the crane stabbing for minnows
in the shallows, beyond the reflected sunlight,
in a cathedral the tints of stained glass,
that addendum to light
that tempers it to grace.
-- "Birth Right"
Our aunt caressed Jesus on the cross,
fingers slowly tracing muscle, sinew,
a sensuality born of her suffering.
She would press her lips to the cold molded plastic
till they split, blood anointing blood.
And when you asked if she would love Jesus
if he were fat and untortured, she beat you.
That same cross, that same forgiveness,
drew blood from you too. Amen.
-- "Zealot"
tear. Train snaking track, snaking thoughts --
window as page, margin as frame, what is kept within,
what slips away. From beyond the willow's lazy bow
into river, beyond the crane stabbing for minnows
in the shallows, beyond the reflected sunlight,
in a cathedral the tints of stained glass,
that addendum to light
that tempers it to grace.
-- "Birth Right"
You were Elijah gone to heaven to fetch a fire
but what of the witness who cannot turn away?
-- "Manhood"
In the yard, rabbits
track an insistent alphabet across pristine snow.
The sky hollowed out by stars.
-- "Insomnia"
Our aunt caressed Jesus on the cross,
fingers slowly tracing muscle, sinew,
a sensuality born of her suffering.
She would press her lips to the cold molded plastic
till they split, blood anointing blood.
And when you asked if she would love Jesus
if he were fat and untortured, she beat you.
That same cross, that same forgiveness,
drew blood from you too. Amen.
-- "Zealot"
Here in the Midwest, winter haunts everything,
even a summer afternoon.
-- "Jordan Is No Mere River"
November 4, 2022
What a gift to read these poems! As I read I hilight words, phrases, and titles of poems I want to return to. Much of this book is hilighted. As I read, I try to figure out why I like some poets and poems more than others. I do not have the answer. His story is not my story, but I struggle to do justice to my story, as he does over and over in these poems. Perhaps, that is why I like them so much. I look forward to reading these poems again soon.
From the poem Vigil: "I want to ask if I gave enough tenderness, gave the light, the wick and the flint, gave the right answers, gave the right yes."
From the poem Vigil: "I want to ask if I gave enough tenderness, gave the light, the wick and the flint, gave the right answers, gave the right yes."
May 31, 2023
I really loved these poems. I sauntered and raced my way through them. I lingered over them, but they were so rich in the experience of the author (Nigerian teaching at Northwestern). My, my, my his images roll and attack and tickle - sometimes all at the same time. It was a wonder to read these.
October 17, 2025
This was a difficult, slow read, in part because of the themes / content and in part the thickness of the language. Not every single line hit, but my oh my when it did, I shivered with both fear delight and breathless aches
October 10, 2022
Picks a gut punch.
October 19, 2022
absolutely and insanely amazing
October 22, 2022
Beautiful and powerful poetry.
November 5, 2022
An intriguing blend of family celebration and grieving, religion and skepticism, African landscapes and memory constructions, gentle lyricism and stark imagery.
Read
November 17, 2022This is a heartbreaking collection of poems about Albani’s brother. It’s one I will continue to read….soulful, complex, with a folkloric imagination. A great book by a great poet.
December 23, 2022
Moving collection. You could feel the pain, the love, and the aching of the writer.
December 29, 2022
Graceful, lovely to the eye and ear, and a pull on the heart, the throat, the gut, the head.
March 18, 2023
Longing loss and (re)creation. These poems bring in fraternal love and last across leagues and laments.
March 25, 2023
Poignant, hauntingly beautiful poems
December 27, 2023
I love Abani's work anyway, but this is one of the best books of poetry I read all year.
April 8, 2024
Chris Abani once told me that my writing had a powerful voice and now that means all the more.
August 23, 2024
what wounds us makes us complicit
September 16, 2025
Not my cup of tea.
June 7, 2023
Like a strange dream, the images in these poems leave impressions that want for interpretation, like the burning of sacred paper, the prophecy of sutured skin, the rough-hewn limbs and lathed heartwood of the family tree. “Terminus” is a “true epiphany.”
“What will not yield to the poet’s gaze will be overwritten.
Sure as ink rides the sway of paper.”
—from “Sojourn”
Favorite Poems:
“Birth Right”
“Sojourn”
“Cameo: Creation”
“That Early Sunday”
“A Small Awe”
“Allegory”
“The Bend of Tomorrow”
“What Is Traveled, What Is Fragile”
“Terminus”
“Scythe”
“Vigil”
“What will not yield to the poet’s gaze will be overwritten.
Sure as ink rides the sway of paper.”
—from “Sojourn”
Favorite Poems:
“Birth Right”
“Sojourn”
“Cameo: Creation”
“That Early Sunday”
“A Small Awe”
“Allegory”
“The Bend of Tomorrow”
“What Is Traveled, What Is Fragile”
“Terminus”
“Scythe”
“Vigil”
April 15, 2023
A stellar collection of reflections to time in another land, an abusive father, and distant mother. Looking to a new land and its christian heritage some relief. Wonderful imagery.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews