A Fire in the Hills

by Afaa M Weaver

In A Fire in the Hills , Afaa focuses on one of the central threads in his body of work. His ongoing project of an articulation of self in relation to the external landscape of the community and the world and the writing of spirit through those revelations of sublimation of self gives way here to a material focus. The racial references are explicit as are the complexities of life lived as a Black man born in America in the mid-twentieth century. These are poems emanating from an attempt to follow Daoist philosophy for most of his life. Knowledge of other is in relation to knowledge of self, and self is an illusory continuum, a perspective wherein the poet embodies the transcendent arc of Malcolm X’s life as credo.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Hardcover

Published April 11, 2023

Reviews

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection, the poet explores “the complexities of life lived as a Black man born in America in the mid-twentieth century,” a self splintered into many shimmering shards pieced together in these poems.

“In the stories we tell of who we are
so who we are will always be kept
by keepers of souls, ripped flesh
of theft across generations, sunsets
planted in bloodied fields of rice,
cotton. In the stories folks relieve
themselves of outrage, one scream
at night, one at sunrise, by and by.
—from “Notes As Our Dead Seek Justice,” p. 15

Favorite Poems:
“Notes As Our Dead Seek Justice”
“All American”
“The Sirens of Saigon”
“Requiem for the Coupe De Ville”
“What a Fellowship”
“What Elizabeth Bishop Could Not Know”
“Proposition Joe, from the Grave”
“Charleston”
“Good Uncles”
“All Ghosts Rise, Black Theater”
“Sacred”
“Ephemera”
“God Is”

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these poems. These poems speak to a story of this country not enough in my sight. It is the poet’s way of speaking to himself, to us, to the nation, to the world. He does not turn away from violence nor beauty. He looks to see imagination and possibility where others only see burning fragments of our future.