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Loading... The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn (2011)by Tanella Boni
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Tanella Boni is a major African poet, and this book, The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn, is her first full collection to be translated into English. These poems wrestle with the ethnic violence and civil war that dominated life in West Africa's Ivory Coast in the first decade of the new millennium. Boni maps these events onto a mythic topography where people live among their ancestors and are subject to the whims of the powerful, who are at once magical and all too petty. The elements--the sun, the wind, the water--are animated as independent forces, beyond simile or metaphor. Words, too, are elemental, and the poet is present in the landscape--"during these times / I searched for the letters / for the perfect word." Boni affirms her desire for hope in the face of ethno‑cultural and state violence although she acknowledges that desiring to hope and hoping are not the same. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)841.914Literature French and related languages French poetry 1900- 1900-1999, 20th century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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The poems aren't all doom-laden, and she does also reflect on hope, and the possibility of a return to simpler, kinder, community-based living built on compassion and mutual understanding, though whether it's a realistic hope or wishful thinking is something not, I think, resolved in the poems, but maybe that's more about my own disposition.
The introduction (despite being USA-centric) and brief notes help interpretation, some internet research on Côte d'Ivoire history being useful, too. (