Mother Tongues: Poems

by Tsitsi Ella Jaji

Winner of the 2018 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize

Tsitsi Ella Jaji’s second full-length collection of poems, Mother Tongues , begins at home, with the first words and loves we learn, and the most intimate vows we swear. How deep does your language go back? Jaji’s artful verse is a three-tiered gourd of sustenance, vessel, and folklore. The tongues speak the beginnings and the present; they capture and claim the losses, the ironies, and a poet’s human evolution. Mother Tongues is a collection of language unto itself that translates directly to the heart.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2019

Reviews

[Caitlin]

Tsitsi Ella Jaji's Mother Tongues is spare and elegant, looking to the past to sing to the future while speaking always to our present as well. Jaji explores language, identity, health, family, and place, engaging with such disparate topics as Beethoven, refugee camps, and Graves' disease.

Mother Tongues is poetry to be savored, and treasured, and read far more than once.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, these did not work for me. They did not excite me. Too many images based around music for my taste.