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Trekking from the U.S. to the Caribbean and Canada––wind at their back, ear to the ground, listening for the "logos of what trembles underfoot"–– the poems in Music for Exile glean an inheritance of lyrical, received and invented forms to beckon a "mythic assemblage," an aggregation of personal and historical losses, intimate and en masse.
In poems of place, poems of encounter, domestic epics and epistolary calls, deGannes locates the exiled music in the caesurae of one immigrant woman's arc... The poems trace, retrace, crossover, "draw poison out" and "fissure desire," enacting and inviting an expansive reckoning of all that has brought us here. They demand the journey be worthy and sing into being a radical sense of belonging.
Music for Exile is Nehassaiu deGannes' first book-length collection of poems,
In poems of place, poems of encounter, domestic epics and epistolary calls, deGannes locates the exiled music in the caesurae of one immigrant woman's arc... The poems trace, retrace, crossover, "draw poison out" and "fissure desire," enacting and inviting an expansive reckoning of all that has brought us here. They demand the journey be worthy and sing into being a radical sense of belonging.
Music for Exile is Nehassaiu deGannes' first book-length collection of poems,
As incisive as they are lush and lyrical, these poems will open your eyes, and make you believe in the power of language to do necessary political, spiritual, and philosophical work. | Editors' citation
Praise for
Music for Exile
Through history, as through memory, these wide-ranging, rapturous poems roam. What they gather–– and what they set free––sing and grieve the miracle of 'love's small galaxy.'" | Tracy K. Smith, Wade in the Water (Former U.S. Poet Laureate.)
Music for Exile has an incantatory grace. –– ... from the wounds of childhood to a present day mercy for the self. This book marks the arrival of an important and compassionate voice in poetry. | Sarah Ruhl, 44 poems for You, Eurydice
Music for Exile reconfigures saltwater as blood and sweat as hurricane to ask the question, "Could I invent the drum?" The answer is this very book. The answer is a resounding yes! | Phillip B. Williams, Thief in the Interior
Nehassaiu deGannes has deftly and expertly crafted... poems that will shake you to your core, remind us from whence we came and shake loose our homesickness and shaky memory. This book made me weep. It is a revelation. | Cynthia Oliver, Queen of the Virgins: Pageantry and Black Womanhood in the Caribbean
–– a fresh voice, unafraid of labels or schools, formalism/experimental in the same poem. The same line! A vortex where politics and race... history and etymology all whirl in the gyres of poetry. And love. deGannes lives in the place where poetry is born––shout Hallelujah! | Bob Holman, Sing This One Back To Me
How remarkable when a poet can seamlessly make an altar of languages and intuition then feverishly foot-stomp us towards sight and renewal. Such are the gifts in deGannes' flaming songs of remembrance and refuge! | Major Jackson, The Absurd Man
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