Distributed for Seagull Books
Gestuary
A richly imagined, physically charged poetry collection in which history, myth, and protest are transformed into lyrical gestures.
Sylvie Kandé’s Gestuary offers a collection of gestures—of death and life, of tenderness and brutality—that fractures the flow of time. Senegalese riflemen from World War I are juxtaposed with migrants at borders who sew their lips shut in protest over immigration policies. In dream-like sequences, the dead refuse to stay underground and “push against the fence / that swings between our realm and theirs.” Inspired by unexpected sources, including jazz, sculpture, the legacy of the slave trade, proverbs, and elements of Diola culture, Kandé’s poems are rich in musicality and sophisticated syntax, rendered into a lyrical and luminous English by Nancy Naomi Carlson.
Sylvie Kandé’s Gestuary offers a collection of gestures—of death and life, of tenderness and brutality—that fractures the flow of time. Senegalese riflemen from World War I are juxtaposed with migrants at borders who sew their lips shut in protest over immigration policies. In dream-like sequences, the dead refuse to stay underground and “push against the fence / that swings between our realm and theirs.” Inspired by unexpected sources, including jazz, sculpture, the legacy of the slave trade, proverbs, and elements of Diola culture, Kandé’s poems are rich in musicality and sophisticated syntax, rendered into a lyrical and luminous English by Nancy Naomi Carlson.
Table of Contents
Translator’s Foreword
Of Air and Water
1.Call of Air
2.Gull/Mute
3.Deposits & Withdrawals
4.Sugarcane
5.Waltz of Stone
6.September’s Bird
7.Survival According to Alice
8.Genocide
9.Genealogy
10.On the Whole…
11.Visitation
12.Scraps of a Portrait
13.News by Hand
Striking Hard
1.The Hot Iron Strikes
2.The Final Stroke
3.Awe-Struck
4.Striking a Pose
Digging
1.Rite of Passage
2.Vahine
3.Prayer
4.Departed Night Butterfly of Mine
5.[Grave]s[tone] for Noguchi
The Warring Dead
1.Mobilized
2.The Warring Dead I
3.The Warring Dead II
Better Left Unsaid
1.Winnowing
2.The Egg and the Stone
3.On the “Nine Slaves” Altarpiece
4.Better Left Unsaid
5.Pharaoh Queen
6.Roaming Soul
What Speaking Intends to Say
1.Colophon I
2.Colophon II
Coda
Of Air and Water
1.Call of Air
2.Gull/Mute
3.Deposits & Withdrawals
4.Sugarcane
5.Waltz of Stone
6.September’s Bird
7.Survival According to Alice
8.Genocide
9.Genealogy
10.On the Whole…
11.Visitation
12.Scraps of a Portrait
13.News by Hand
Striking Hard
1.The Hot Iron Strikes
2.The Final Stroke
3.Awe-Struck
4.Striking a Pose
Digging
1.Rite of Passage
2.Vahine
3.Prayer
4.Departed Night Butterfly of Mine
5.[Grave]s[tone] for Noguchi
The Warring Dead
1.Mobilized
2.The Warring Dead I
3.The Warring Dead II
Better Left Unsaid
1.Winnowing
2.The Egg and the Stone
3.On the “Nine Slaves” Altarpiece
4.Better Left Unsaid
5.Pharaoh Queen
6.Roaming Soul
What Speaking Intends to Say
1.Colophon I
2.Colophon II
Coda