Middle Passages

By: Kamau Brathwaite

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Synopsis: doubt and displacement to affirmation, book, a work of passion and integrity." Kamau Brathwaite's poetry offers stunning collages devoted to the history, mythology, and language of the African diaspora, and has gained him a world reputation. Middle Passages, his most recent collection, is his sixteenth poetry volume, but his first with an American publisher. With notes of protest and lament, the fourteen poems of MiddlePassages address the effects of the Middle Passage of slavery on the New World, and celebrate great musicians (Ellington, Bessie Smith), poets, heroes of the resistance, and Third World leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Walter Rodney, and Nelson Mandela. And as the London Times Literary Supplement noted, it is "a poetry that moves between rage and tenderness, . MiddlePassages is a potent and effective "His dazzling, inventive language, his tragic yet unquenchable vision, make Kamau Brathwaite one of the most compelling of late twentieth century poets." -Adrienne Rich "Kamau Brathwaite is one of the most important poets in the Western Hemisphere. A musicianly sensibility of sharp political reference." -Amiri Baraka "Its menace is real, its compassion touches the deepest springs of sadness, and its mythology is potent and frightening. People die in his world."-P.N. Review From the Book Jacket