Daphne’s Lot

“Daphne’s Lot (An Epic) is an event of history, myth, and knowledge in the event of war and the ongoing turbulence of being human. With the language of hard truth lifted by singing Abani speaks what is impossible to speak. His poetry makes a shine in the hellish bogs where it is rare to see shine. Kindness is the measure of these poems. It’s a beautiful and tough poetry.”—Joy Harjo, Mvskoke poet and musician

“The masterful wedding of the narrative and the lyric in these poems (whose subject is the maturation of a sensibility, the coming-of-age of a young Englishwoman– the power of her ties to family, husband and her “adopted” country, Nigeria– as well as the illumination of her own soul and that of the narrator’s) fills the reader with both sorrow and wonder. It is an instructive tale for our age its vision of the individual will and imagination resisting the madness of politics and the destruction of war is singular and profound.”—Carol Muske-Dukes