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Overview
If we were all brave enough to resurrect the voices lost from our humanity, what would they say? Award-winning poet Quincy Troupe, spokesman for the humanizing forces of poetry, music, and art, parts the Atlantic and rattles the ground built on slavery with Ghost Voices: A Poem in Prayer.
we are crossing, / we are / crossing, / we are crossing in big salt water, // we are crossing, // crossing under a sky of no guilt / we have left home // though we know we will go back / someday, / see our people / as we knew them . . .
Troupe re-creates the history of lost voices between the waters of Africa, Cuba, and the United States. His daring poetics drenched in new forms-notably the seven-elevens-clench transformative narratives spurred on by a relentless, rhythmic language that mimics the foaming waves of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. His personae speak quantum litanies within one epic, sermonic-gospel to articulate our most ancient ways of storytelling and survival.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780810138995 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Northwestern University Press |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2018 |
| Pages: | 80 |
| Product dimensions: | 4.90(w) x 6.80(h) x 0.30(d) |
About the Author
QUINCY TROUPE is the author of nine volumes of poetry, three children's books, and the author, coauthor, or editor of six nonfiction works. He collaborated with Miles Davis on his autobiography and with Chris Gardner on The Pursuit of Happyness, which spent more than forty weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and was made into a major motion picture starring Will Smith. Troupe has also written a screenplay for Miles and Me, the memoir of his friendship with Miles Davis. Poetry collections include Transcircularities: New and Selected Poems, winner of the 2003 Milt Kessler Poetry Award and selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of poetry in 2002; The Architecture of Language, winner of the 2007 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement; and Errançities, published in 2012.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Chorus Song: Crossing Big Salt Water
we are crossing,
we are crossing,
we are crossing in big salt water,
we are crossing,
crossing under a sky of no guilt we have left home though we know we will go back someday,
see our people as we knew them,
we have left everything behind,
we seek somewhere,
our dreams somewhere,
our dreams out there,
somewhere we are searching,
we look everywhere seeking IT,
we are seeking IT
we don't know where,
but we are going,
we are going, seeking,
looking for IT everywhere we are crossing,
crossing in big salt water,
we are under the waves,
the ships and enslaved,
they survived our deaths but found their own became slaves crossing in the storms packed,
packed into stinking holds,
we are crossing over as spirits beneath those up there up on ships,
packed in their own stink inking dark holes,
packed in their gored,
exfoliated flesh,
eviscerated, we are still here underneath riding the backs of african ghost crabs underneath the big salt water under a sky with no guilt,
we are crossing,
we are crossing over together over and under,
we are crossing spirits down here,
flesh packed up there,
in them stinking ships packed with our flesh another death sharks strung out for miles behind the ships,
we are crossing,
we are crossing,
riding the backs of african ghost crabs we are crossing,
we are crossing in big salt water,
we are going somewhere,
where we will find our kinfolks,
somewhere,
we left our homes,
but we carry it with us where we are going,
after crossing we will fly back home,
speak through the shadows,
we will not be strangers when we will seek IT
we will find our FREEDOM,
we are crossing,
we are crossing,
we are crossing in big salt water
First Take
from my terrace in goyave, guadeloupe,
eye listen,
hear sea waves washing in whispering lullabies combing through sand with raspy voices,
licking with lapping finger tongues over a script lost and secret coded utterances sigh,
eye am hearing wailing journeys crawling across time,
crawling onshore here in guadeloupe,
this volcanic butterfly island rising from the dark howling bottom where translucent spirits cover their black holes for eyes,
diffuse their hands,
speak through silence,
what they saw blew out the lights of their sights
400 years back listen now,
hear them speak lost rhythms scripted in the skins of talking drums,
hear them speak,
hear the wailing,
caterwauling language spoken through pulsating glissandos
eye hear them throbbing, calling in my dreams you hear them calling too,
you hear them,
with their caterwauling voices speaking directly in our chambers speaking directly to you
Arrival of Ghost Voices
in the dead of night ghost voices come,
surround me in sleep,
hold nothing back from the cocked ears of slumber,
sharp as the blade of a knife paring sweetness when slicing through the blush of a mango's skin reveals what the palate and memory evoke,
those voices with their severed tongues castrated from FREEDOM
now carry the cruel passage of pitched voices hoarse from the salt water crossing, now voices wailing with pain while being eaten with teeth of ghost hyenas,
glowing like skin of translucent piranhas still searching for flesh somewhere,
now my dreams are a fever filled with sacred chants and dancing priests,
red-eyed witch doctors who know secrets howled from the underworld of death,
they will serve this potion of a voodoo white flower to the disbelievers,
turn them into zombies eye hear the arrival of those raised holy voices, hear them,
see them in my imagination riding backs of african ghost spirit crabs as they arrive here in my dreams,
eye am listening,
hearing their siren calls eye am listening prayer seducing in the night,
eye am listening, hearing your spirit voices rising from the sea surrounding the wings of a beautiful butterfly shaped like this island,
this place where ancestors are kept,
voices in whirlpools eddying flowing on shores curled like lovers,
their love raptures whispering,
riffing in my heart,
eye hear some of them howling through the crossing inside polished bones with their wind and tongues beseeching those who survived,
in the newborn america, scaffolded from within words from skin-wombs of talking drums they came through the door of no return the reaper took them down to swim inside battalions sweeping west,
just below the terrace where eye am lost in dreaming
eye listen, listen closely now too the skin of the drums flying on wings of tongues washed ashore seeking redemption,
sulfur whispers, winding themselves around faith like an octopus with gold tentacles inside rivers of blood-fingers,
like birds on the wind there is a rhythm there, where death even has a rhythm when sharks guillotine the necks of kinfolks,
hear them screaming in salt water listen now to the caterwauling history in the scaffolding litany of sacred voices,
beseeching sea waves of gospels,
listen to the voices swirling out of these watery litanies foaming,
hear what they say, listen,
listen closely to what they say
Transferring the Dreams of the Ghost Voices
& so each day the sun rises,
voices resurrect the morning mist of memory we will all be reborn one day
these fevered dreams anchored in history,
why these voices flew like birds in springtime,
they took us there
because we only knew to keep on going,
seeking IT we knew to keep on going seeking IT
The New Dream of Ghost Voices
where does breath go after flesh falls away from bone,
does it remember
perhaps it's there tangled in the fog of our willful erasure
where does breath go when we disrobing history plunder the gold coin chests of enslaving callous men loving mammon,
blinded by evil, the earth now a furnace,
can we still be reborn
beyond structure,
tongues re-creating themselves,
changing, fusing inside poetry,
rhythms evoked by drum masters'
onomatopoeia, cracking shrapnel flying inside words,
the moon rising from its dark grave above the promise death kept,
voices of redemption within healing songs of light.
raising voices of redemption above the promise death kept
Chorus: African Ghost Spirit Crabs Cross Karukera (Guadeloupe)
we arrived on this butterfly island became birds flying in the mist of trees,
crabs crawling sideways
we, the shadows, flocks of flying ghost voices moved across slowly, sometimes quickly through places where a few people with skins white as the moon glowed in starlight
many look the way we look when we were alive with skin —
except we had skins black as midnight —
diamond eyes set deep in midnight skins soft as the love of our mothers —
others carried cold eye of snakes —
chained, their eyes sad,
heads hung low as beaten dogs,
as birds lying on earth with broken wings
some of us decided to stay the beauty of the place,
others decided FREEDOM was somewhere else,
and went on looking for IT,
where,
we didn't know where,
but we knew IT wasn't here,
was out there somewhere,
so we left in the mist moving from tree to tree,
gathered in open meadows,
some crawled sideways,
others made their way flying,
we didn't know where,
but we knew we were going,
moving toward somewhere, looking for IT
out there somewhere
though we didn't know where,
but we were going, seeking IT,
we came upon another big salt water,
beneath the gray sky of no remorse,
towering waves full of savage,
unhinged, leering skeletons,
still we crawled sideways toward some where, we didn't know where,
but we were still looking for IT, though we didn't know where IT was but it was there in our imaginations,
so we moved forward toward IT,
we came to be reborn
Excerpted from "Ghost Voices"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Quincy Troupe.
Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
I. Chorus Song Crossing Big Salt Water II. First Take III. Arrival of Ghost Voices IV. Transferring the Dreams of the Ghost Voices V. The New Dream of Ghost Voices VI. Chorus: African Ghost Spirit Crabs cross Karukera (Guadelopue) VII. Transition: Guadeloupe (Karukera) to The Gulf of Mexico VIII. Song of the Hoodoo Spirit Crabs VIIII. The New World - Moving North X. Going back to Goyave, Guadeloupe: What my Ears Needed to Hear XI. Hoodoo Crab Spirits find New Homes XII. Surviving XIII. The Enlightened Awakening. The Eye
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