Canticles II - (Essential Poets (Ecco)) by George Elliott Clarke (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p><em>Canticles</em> is a lyric-styled epic. Clarke's visions of canonical and apocryphal scriptures are black in ink, but lightning in illumination. Testament II issues re-readings, revisions, rewrites of scriptures crucial to the emergent (Anglophone) African Diaspora in the Americas. <em>Canticles II (MMXIX)</em> and <em>Canticles II (MMXX)</em> follow Testament I (also issued in two parts) whose subject is History, principally, of slavery and imperialism and liberation and independence. <em>Canticles II</em> is properly irreverent where necessary, but never blasphemous. It is scripture become what it always is, really, anyway: Poetry.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> From the Back Cover </b></p></br></br><i>Canticles</i> is a lyric-styled epic. Testament II issues re-readings?revisions, rewrites?of scriptures crucial to the emergent (Anglophone) African Diaspora in the Americas. <i>Canticles II (MMXIX)</i> and <i>Canticles II (MMXX)</i> follow <i>Testament I</i> (also issued in two parts) whose subject is History, principally, of slavery and imperialism and liberation and independence. Canticles II is properly irreverent where necessary, but never blasphemous. It is scripture become what it always is, really, anyway: Poetry.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><p>[Truth] is a preoccupation [of] <em>Canticles II (MMXX)</em>. In the introduction, Clarke describes the book as "a conjured, 'Africadian' Bible," but qualifies that "[o]ne will be careful not to read it as if it were The Bible" (xii). Clarke's reflections on his adaptation of sacred texts imply that his book seeks versions of "the" truth.</p>--Canadian Literature<br><br><p><em>Canticles</em> is George Elliott Clarke's most textured work to date. Like Virgil guiding Dante, Clarke guides us deep into the dark echo chamber of history where he remixes an epic catalogue of multicultural voices from Hannibal to Harriet "Moses" Tubman. Weaving these voices together, like bards of yesteryear churning raw material into epic song, Clarke plays the role of a chameleon poet inking a brutal lyricism onto the page. These canticles abound with polyphony: Clarke echoes slave and imperialist debates that stretch back to Cleopatra, provides new voice to Marie-Josèphe Angélique and Phillis Wheatley, and revises and reworks history with the powers of a firebrand poet in full control of his craft. As spirited and incendiary as Ezra Pound's querulous Cantos, <em>Canticles</em> is a manifesto that tells us--howling, screeching, testifying, rhyming--that poetry makes things happen, and that it has as much to tell us as ever.</p>--Paul Watkins, Assistant Professor of English at Vancouver Island University<br><br><p>If you want to read poems that just about sing themselves free of the page, read George Elliott Clarke. His ear is tuned to the forms and frequencies of history; the sound and syntax of humanity. No other North American poet writes with his majestic euphony.</p>--Terrance Hayes, author of Lighthead, winner of the 2010 National Book Award<br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><p>Acclaimed for his narrative lyric suites (<i>Whylah Falls</i> and <i>Execution Poems</i>), his lyric "colouring books" (<i>Blue, Black, Red, and Gold</i>), his selected poems (<i>Blues and Bliss</i>), his opera libretti and plays (<i>Beatrice Chancy and Trudeau: Long March, Shining Path</i>), George Elliott Clarke now presents us with his epic-in-progress, <i>Canticles</i>, a work that views History as a web of imperialism, enslavement, and insurrection. A native Africadian, Canada's 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate ranges the atlas and ransacks the library to ink lines unflinching before Atrocity and unquiet before Oppression.</p>
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