Refractive Africa

Will Alexander

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the California Book Award, Refractive Africa, a 'Ballet of the Forgotten', is a searing pas de trois. The volume’s opening poem pays homage to the innovative Nigerian-Yoruban author Amos Tutuola; it ends with an encomium to the modernist Malagasy poet Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo—two writers whose luminous art suffered 'colonial wrath through refraction.' A tribute to the Congo forms the bridge and brisé vole of the book: the Congo as 'charged aural colony' and 'primal interconnection,' a 'subliminal psychic force' with a colonial and postcolonial history dominated by the Occident. Will Alexander pushes poetic language to the point of most resistance.