Tracers

by Uche Nduka

63 pages, ebook

Published April 1, 2010

Reviews

[David Wolach · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the heels of eel on reef, Nduka's carefully posed Tracers is "not a palimpsest" but a dancing of the tectonic plates beneath us, the "underlife" of war's plural, its tributary several and diverging carnivalesque affects, where here, dross as self-aware becomes the refusal of elegy: "to deflag is to rejoice / begin the scrolling." As you do, a tumult of lyric, song, and sign left by the ghosted and ghosting emerge. Shore and pontoon meet "Honest Play" and the "telescoped tattooer." Nduka's collision of extraordinarily contemporary linguistic forms with ancient myth, science, and alchemy elude both the languages of national border and lament: Tracers conjures "seizures of steam to contend with," engages the catastrophe of globalization with strange and destructive joy. This is a recuperation of that which we have yet to name.

Many thanks to book artist Kate Robinson, who designed Tracers, and to painter and digital artist Spartaco Margioni, who provided us with the beautiful cover image.

Uche Nduka, poet, essayist, lyricist, was born and brought up in Nigeria. His books include Flower Child (1988), Second Act (1994), The Bremen Poems (1995), Chiaroscuro (which won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize for 1997), If Only TheNight (2003), Heart’s Field (2005), eel on reef (2007). Nduka has lived in Holland and Germany. He presently lives and works in New York City.