War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry

Front Cover

Charles Cantalupo has amazingly traversed the threshold of the once solitary land, where oblivious Eritrean poets, all on their own, wrestled with gods and demons to grope for meaning in the heat of war and in the burning desire for peace. The uniquely creative translation discloses a vibrant poetry rendered in languages hardly resembling English, yet all the same allied to the family of world literature. While the poets in War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry are only a small part of a vast body of ancient and modern poetry, this book offers a gate for poetics to triumph over the vitriol of politics as Eritrean poetry joins global forces in search of connectivity. Beyene Haile, Eritrea’s greatest novelist Author of Abidu’do Tibluwo (Madness), Dukan Tibereh (Tibereh’s Shop) In War and Peace in Contemporary Eritrean Poetry, Charles Cantalupo writes about the poetry he is familiar with and which he has, more than any other literary or Africanist scholar to date, revealed to the world. In this study, Cantalupo is surefooted, proficient, and incisive. He deploys his scholarly expertise and personal experience of a poet into a discussion of the relatively young nation’s rich poetic heritage. The concluding appendix of selected poems gives the reader an opportunity to ingest the ripeness of Eritrean poetry. This book is surely a welcome addition not only to critical works on contemporary African poetry but also to the subjects of war and peace in the Horn of Africa. Tanure Ojaide, Frank Porter Graham Professor of African Studies and poet ii ...