June 10, 2008

Soon Come: Jamaican Spirituality, Jamaican Poetics

Jamaican Poets


Soon Come: Jamaican Spirituality, Jamaican Poetics by Hugh Hodges, Assistant Professor of English Literature at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, is now available.


Beginning with traditional proverbs and Anancy stories, Soon Come explores healing rituals, possession rites, and miracles in Revival hymns; the seminal poetry of Claude McKay, Una Marson, and Louise Bennett; the Rastafari-influenced reggae of Bob Marley, Jimmy Cliff, Bunny Wailer, and Ras Michael; the dub poetry of Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mutabaruka; and the groundbreaking work of Dennis Scott, Anthony McNeill, and Lorna Goodison. What emerges is a profoundly hopeful vision of Jamaican poetry as an ongoing ritual that engenders the future even as it reimagines the past. Written in a lively, accessible style, Soon Come will appeal as much to the general reader as to the academic, to the serious Bob Marley fan as much as to the student of New World religious traditions.


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