Kwame Dawes is Chancellor’s Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and author or editor of numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes’s most recent books include the poetry collections City of Bones: A Testament and Punto de Burro and the novel Bivouac. He is director of the African Poetry Book Fund, editor of the award-winning African Poetry Book Series, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. The winner of numerous awards for his writing and service to the literary community, Dawes was elected a chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, named a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018, and won the prestigious Windham Campbell Award for Poetry in 2019.

Acknowledgments

I
How I Became an Apostle
Advent
The Barking Geese of Edenton
The Immigrant Contemplates Death
Fledge
Longing for the Hall of the Deaf
The Midwestern Sky
First Winter
Loneliness
Dark Season
Plain-Speaking
Novela
The Scent of the Cankerworm
Dawn
Chadron
Sandoz Revisited
The Enemy of Memory
The Poor Man’s Sacrifice
Bones
Sponge
On History
II
The Epoch of Lies
Sea and Rain
Purple
Forgetting
The Quality of Light
In These Times
Sugar
“All Teeth and Smile”
Sniper
III
Half
Long Distance
Prairie
Pleasure
The Chronicler of Sorrows
July Fourth
IV
Jasmine
On Blindness
Insomniac
Bed Time
Transplant
Surviving, Again
Sancho Panza
The Messiness of Place
Bone Dust
Ambulation
Falling Away
On Picking Battles
The Exile Remembers His Sisters
Fatigue