Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girl’s penchant for her parents’ keys to a warrior’s hunt for words, Wa Ngugi’s poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment. Ultimately it is among multiple homes, nations, and identities that he finds an uneasy peace.
Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girl’s penchant for her parents’ keys to a warrior’s hunt for words, Wa Ngugi’s poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment. Ultimately it is among multiple homes, nations, and identities that he finds an uneasy peace.
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Overview
Written as a tribute to family, place, and bodily awareness, Mukoma Wa Ngugi’s poems speak of love, war, violence, language, immigration, and exile. From a baby girl’s penchant for her parents’ keys to a warrior’s hunt for words, Wa Ngugi’s poems move back and forth between the personal and the political. In the frozen tundra of Wisconsin, the biting winds of Boston, and the heat of Nairobi, Wa Ngugi is always mindful of his physical experience of the environment. Ultimately it is among multiple homes, nations, and identities that he finds an uneasy peace.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780803290679 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | UNP - Nebraska |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2016 |
| Series: | African Poetry Book |
| Pages: | 96 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.40(d) |
About the Author
Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an assistant professor of English at Cornell University. His books include the novel Black Star Nairobi and the poetry collection Hurling Words at Consciousness.
Read an Excerpt
Logotherapy
By Mukoma Wa Ngugi
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of NebraskaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-9530-8
CHAPTER 1
To Give a Word a Name
Preface
Hunting Words with My Father
(For my father's seventieth)
One morning I burst into my father's study and said
when I grow up, I too want to hunt, I want to hunt
words, and giraffes, pictures, buffalos, and books
and he, holding a pen and a cup of tea, said, Little Father,
to hunt words can be dangerous — but still, it is best to start
early. He waved his blue bic-pen and his office turned
into Nyandarua forest. It was morning, the mist rising
from the earth like breath as rays from the sun fell hard
on the ground like sharp nails. Little Father, do you see
him? — my father asked. No, I said. Look again — the mist
is a mirror — do you see him? And I looked again and
there was a Maasai warrior tall as the trees, spear in hand.
Shadow him, feign his movements, shadow him until
his movements are your movements. Running my feet
along the leaves I walked to where he was, crouched
like him so close to the earth, feet sinking deeper
into the earth as if in mud, turning and reading the wind
and fading into the mist till I became one with the forest.
For half a day we stayed like this — tired and hungry
I was ready for home. But my father said, I did not say
this was easy — you cannot hunt words on a full stomach.
And just as soon as he spoke there was a roar so loud
and stomping so harsh that hot underground streams broke
open like a dozen or so water pipes sending hissing,
steaming water high into the air. I turned to run
but the warrior stood his ground. As the roar
and thunder came closer, his hair braided and full of red
ochre turned into dreadlocks so long that they seemed like
roots running from the earth. When the transfiguration
was complete, before me stood a Mau Mau fighter, spear
in one hand, homemade gun in the other, eyes so red
that through the mist they looked like hot molten
cinders, the long dreadlocks a thousand thin
snakes in the wind, the leaves and grass and thorns
rushing past him. You must help him, don't just stand
there, help him — my father implored but just as soon
as I had closed my little hands into fists, the lion
appeared high up in the air, body stretched the whole
length as the Mau Mau fighter pulled the spear like
it was a long root from the earth. The lion, midair, tried
to stop, recoiled its talons to offer peace, but it was too
late and it let out another roar as its chest crushed
into the spear, breastplate giving way until the spear
had edged its way to the heart. Dying then dead
it continued its terrible arc and landed. I waved
and the picture stood still. My father came up to me
and asked, Why have you stopped the hunt? I said
"but we killed it — I have what we came for." I pointed
to where the Mau Mau warrior was pulling his spear
from the carcass, but my father shook his head and said
— You have done well but look closely — how can you
carry all that in a word? How can we carry that home?
It is too heavy. I laughed and said — "Father, you help me."
But he pointed to the ground, to a steady flow of a bright
thin red river furiously winding down from the grooves
of the spear to the earth. I too pointed, unable to speak
— the beauty larger than my imagination. I was confused.
I had no words. Come, let us go home Little Father.
When you are of age you shall find the words, he said.
But always be careful — to hunt a word is to hunt a life.
Ancestries of Land Mines
I
As children we walk without hungering for old age — perfect
little gods made out of clay. Names and things bear your name
but if life is not willed, death will find you. Make clay that
hardens to hold a memory — a thing that cannot trace steps
walked is dead even as it draws breath.
II
Gifts. Rain. To see the world anew. Breathe wet air
cigarette in hand, sneakers in sewer ground, jeans dragging
the day's germs home. In the dark you keep stepping
into your shadow blackened to your skin by night. As a child
in the dark, you could not mirror yourself.
III
Walking home, remnants of yourself drip from remembrances
black ink erodes your skin into the wet road, black islands
for tour guides, blind canes pointing to where you fade and die
each time you are born. Each time you die they say
they loved their neighbor. How they loved your shadows!
IV
As a child, freedom is named after the stomach of needs
even those that we imagine. One day, when the vote first burns
in your imagination, before Soweto Passes ignite like paper tigers
you will feel solidarity because you dreamt it first
and find license to steal the happiness that once rode trains.
V
A train — multiplicity of symbols, departure, arrival,
whirling between worlds and destinations. Beware
of all movement. To resemble the earth is to be without
a constant face. Stand and you will revolve
to be one amongst others like you.
VI
Love is not to be sanitized in its furiousness, beauty
is in the gutters. It travels the spectrum between
hell and the rainbow — where the God sleeps after
we birthed it. Slay it once, then again. Then find love
sufficient to hold the earth's wound close to your open chest.
VII
As a child now half adult, moons and suns wore different faces.
When you learned to say Africa, it wore the face of your home's
wooden planks that cried in the rain, and dried still expressions
that doves could not sing into a song. Refugee child walking along
intricate boundaries to find home in starved margins.
VIII
Landscapes of so many faces, truths of landscapes, the blues
the sukus, salsa, jazz, Lingala, the rumba — and the Tizita
all rhythms to the same step — the swish of chains against the ocean
winds. A word alone skates to sing, we remain at sea waiting to sink
an oar into the next blue wave.
IX
The world evolves in small infinite steps. Where we don't grow
mugumo trees in our backyards, the mirror of another grows and feeds
our children strange fruits. Refugee child learns to hold a gun
walking along boundaries without spilling into land mines of ancestry
— Nkurumah's natural-born child soldier of no borders.
X
A newborn child like a fruit falls to her parents' feet. If they don't walk
then she must learn from her grandparents. If they too stood still
if their world was always still like a photograph, then it must trust
its infant footsteps to draw a map of Africa as one molds clay.
And unlike our god, she must learn to die for her creation.
Keys
(For Nyambura)
By the time she was two, my three-year-old daughter
had her own set of play keys, keys that her mother,
and her aunt Robin played with as children. I imagine
that for her, these little jingling things that we cannot
leave home or without which we cannot every now
and then open our fire safety box to add one more
diploma or contract are powerful if not magical totems.
But somewhere around the age of nine or ten or whenever children
earn the right to close and open the doors to their lives, keys
will be yet another thing not to leave the house without
like her lunch box, homework, or a cellphone by its other name
then. And some day, when her mother and I are long gone,
or, more cheerfully, old and with secrets pouring out
of our demented minds faster than the life oozing out
of us, and our grandchildren are playing with keys that once
opened the doors to our lives and secrets, will she realize
as I do now that all that remains of all those things locked
in our safes is a random set of play keys, unattached?
My Two Names
I
I have tried but am never hungry in Nairobi and full in Boston.
No matter my will the parallels will not collapse — it is a synchronized
stomach this one. Sometimes I try for daylight here to surprise
nightfall there. But right in the divide of night and day
the sun is lodged in such a place that I am always awake here
and asleep there.
I am without a name. Yet, I bear two names.
I am without a name. I bear four names. I am nameless.
II
Always outside my window, my shadow restless likes a ghost
calls me to find its parallel. When I left home, I found
it here dancing with rope, an effigy outlined in chalk and we took
turns as shadow and being.
When I close my eyes to this sun or moon born still, the world around
me keeps changing form and I make a home. But flight
too has a shadow, and I fall back into things I cannot name
or touch. What I cannot name I cannot touch.
One day I will have to speak to myself.
III
One day, in my bones, marrow deep and complete like a grenade,
I find remnants of those that walked and lived hard before me
Arthur Nortje-Can Themba, Marechera — all born in times when
to imagine collapse of parallels was as treacherous as treason.
IV
Home is longing not to be in two places at once.
This morning there I woke up to sounds of mourning and tear gas,
graves as shallow as my writing paper
deep like diamonds and coal mines.
This morning here I awoke to a cup of tea with fresh ginger and mud
— someone's black blood. There, this morning thirty years
ago, I witness Kimathi's hanging. This morning here
thirty Puerto Rican nationalists were hanged.
One day I will have to speak to all of ourselves.
To Our Unborn Child Whom We Shall Name Nyambura
It is 7:49 p.m. — your mother, and you — twelve weeks now — are making black beans garnished with corn — I think — at the point you are reading this you will see what I mean — sometimes what she cooks is undecipherable, like the old texts from Timbuktu. You have both been eating a lot. This exhausted chef is in his office writing.
For the purposes of present writing, I mean writing in real time and speaking to you, I shall now taste what she has made — before that let me mention she also brought me a fork — expected — and a napkin — unexpected — she got a haircut today — but that is neither here nor there.
About that bite. After letting the steam escape, which carried with it the fragrance of garlic and onion, I then took a bite — it was good, this heap — do not be misled by the word heap — whatever it was, it was tasty.
When you get to know me you will wish I had kept more of these notes, and then you will get to know me well enough and you will know I only wrote to you, let's face it, when I had to. This, on my first day of writing to you, I want you to know — you will enter this world loved — by your mother and I — You were loved even before you were born.
Well — that is the pleasant stuff. But this I want you to know also — you have made your mother change — her hips expanding, her breasts sore, she has had to postpone her boards (if you become a writer that will mean a dart board and if you become a doctor, that will be mean — well, what it means). Also unpredictable foods and tastes — now you have made her hate my oxtail soup but love those sundaes topped with gluten-free brownies — your taste I must presume.
We worry, and we love. The world you will be born in — what responsibility shall we take for it? The questions you will have and demand of us — what answers shall we have? I hit a deer on my way to see your mother over Thanksgiving — I was calm — and she was calm — I cannot imagine a world, no, it would be an unjust world, a wrong world if I was not there to greet you. In this, my first note to you — know that even though we joke, a little alien has taken over your mother's body, you were born into love.
Oops, have to go now — a friend is calling me from Edison's, my beer is almost done anyway — and your mother is going to bed.
In Your Name
(For Nyambura)
Bringer of Rain, I know someday I will learn
to call you by the name your mother and I gave you.
But for now the myriad of little names
will do — gacucu, kamii, Karii, Nyam2
N2 — all names that amuse us now
as often as they will not you.
Kamii — ka-shitter, or Karii, ka-eater, you will abandon
let's face it, even hate me for having them in a poem.
But Kamami — little mother — you will not abandon.
Yes, it will first tie
you down, tongue-tie your teachers and friends, but one day
your name, Nyambura, will free you, and that which
was once like a prison will be a warm embrace and that past
from which you come will be an anchor and not a chain.
Each syllable, a reminder, an echo.
A Moment between Writing
(For Nyambura)
At fifteen months old — here comes your will. Naptime — I rush to my computer. Mid-sentence you wake up. You decide that you should be dressed only after you have your shoes on. The world does not work that way, I say. Is this a battle worth fighting? Food for peace, I go to the kitchen. You crawl up the stairs up to your room, bring down one shoe, you continue crying. The stairs again, the other shoe. I would like to believe that moment changed you because you realized you could make the world move — I don't know — all I can tell you is that after that moment you changed and you became a small devil of your own will. And we loved you for it!
An Orange
You might think that unlike bananas so useful in baking bread, making splits, and in showing the absolutely 100% correct way of wearing a condom that oranges are limited to making fresh juice with or without pulp. But think back to when as a child an orange was a picture with a name to be learned alongside apples and giraffes or became the sun on those days when the mist was so thick that it reflected your face back when you pressed it against the window or became a soccer ball when bouncing objects like tennis balls were banned from the living room. Yes an orange might not have the coolness of a banana, but I dare you a banana peel in that perfect martini, or if you are like me, old but still rough on the edges, a slice of banana to complete a whiskey-filled old-fashioned.
Pepto Bismol
Napoleon, no mustache but twice a halved Hitler
found it decreed by the oracle cow dung, and a witch
doctor that he be in envy of the black nose.
A sling slang not unlike David's, he rode to Egypt
in search of Pharaoh, thinking a black face had
a softer forehead than Goliath. On finding African
slaves emptied into the Americas, "Forward troops"
our halved hero yelled, but alas, the salty swim bloated
one too many a stomach, and ill winds blew due to too
much broken wind. The battlefield — swords thrust —
his ballooned stomach. That is how Pepto Bismol
came about and Waterloo got its name!
Multiplicity and Skins
I
In Boston's summer heat, my skin is stretched taut like a tent,
sweat drops roll off, impervious to skin like rain on iron sheets.
Under this my shelter, veins squeeze violent blood through
capillaries. The calm mummer of an erupting volcano — how
much feeling the universe must have had a second before
explosion of singularity — I walk slowly, my skin a map
of what it was, might have become, could become — the snap
of my umbilical cord has unbalanced my step, somewhat
unhinged my world — even madness invents its own logic.
Here you have to imagine the surprise of a snake shedding
its first skin till losing of skin becomes instinct of renewal,
but then again there is the agony of the moth that transmutes
into silk but come winter stands naked — I carry my shed skins
in my briefcase, a photo album of things I have been.
II
At another time, I wanted to say that the dying do not care
for dying and the living for the living, the perfect paradox
but that was when prophecy came to me easy like death.
Strained, I wipe my face with my palm for sweat
and fever and my face imprints on my hand, wipe
again and it falls onto my palm. I walk home a naked
skull with its face in hand. At a red traffic light,
pedestrian that I am, I pause to study it, wondering
how long before another grows in place. This one,
I loved the best, could have been me, this is the face,
skin I could have become. Folding it into my briefcase
I step into the street. Home, journal in hand, I erase myself
onto a page but I find biography knows nothing of itself,
certainly not the inside of a word. When they asked me
what I was doing when the revolution came, I said
I was at home waiting for my face to grow.
Safe House
Sirens trespass through our bar window
and a mess of red lights dance disco
on our writing pads.
We will not follow the dead
or the dying, the child to be saved
or born still, the old man whose engine
has died mid-stroke, or the victim
of multiple gunshots. We will not
follow those dying from just living.
The ambulance passes by and we
remain snouts dipped in a river's
rush only lifting up our heads
to let the roar pass. Neither
predator nor prey, and at times one
or the other, we are poets in a safe
-house made out of spit and words.
We continue drinking one life
as another, others pass us by.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Logotherapy by Mukoma Wa Ngugi. Copyright © 2016 Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA 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
Acknowledgments I. To Give a Word a Name Preface: Hunting Words with My Father Ancestries of Land Mines Keys My Two Names To Our Unborn Child Whom We Shall Name Nyambura In Your Name A Moment between Writing An Orange Pepto Bismol Multiplicity and Skins Safe House II. Shadows and Light Shadows and Light in Play The Clouds Above A Walk amongst Shadows with Sandra Perfect Silence Is When Each Thing Sings Itself Geysers and Hot Springs Bifocals New Frontiers: Wisconsin Winter I. Excerpts from an Immigrant’s Diary III. Whispers and Tendrils First Meetings First Date Framing Your Picture Framing a Second Picture Guttural Love Love and Distance Leper’s Gold Nostalgia I Nostalgia II A Poem Written in Silence Last Frames IV. Remembrances A Poem for Arthur Nortje and Other Lost African Poets Welcoming Mortality Home My Grandfather’s Hands Letter to My Artist Friend Who Died Young Eight Months and Two Days Loading Trucks at UPS Logotherapy To My Archeologist V. Gifts of Violence Gifts of Violence Faith JailBirds Fall To the Driver Who Splashed Me with Rainwater Dread Locks Revolt Prints of Genocide I Swear I See Skulls Coming Kenya: A Love Letter This Is What I Know Epilogue: On Reading the Poem I Should Have Written