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The River is Rising by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
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ISBN (paperback): 978-1-932870-18-3 About the Book Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s The River is Rising is both brilliant and heartbreaking. Survivor of the brutal Liberian Civil War, Wesley bears witness to a life she lost to that war, and to what it means to be a refugee who has remade herself…. “To every war,” she says simply, “there are no winners”…. I am in awe of these beautiful, necessary poems, and the glory and largesse of Wesley’s vision.
–Cynthia Hogue Patricia Jabbeh Wesley’s poetry is heartfelt, wise, and alive… One senses in her that rare combination of someone who has been deeply schooled in both literature and life, and who has integrated those two into a deeply felt and shrewd worldview. –Stuart Dybek This second book…has something of the incantatory nature of Celan’s poetics, in which the sheer repetition of certain phrases and ideas points out the irresolution in the mind of a survivor… Part of the strength of this collection is that it does not allow itself to wallow in the bleakness of sentiment, but instead confronts and examines the power of death and suffering… –Publisher’s Weekly (about Becoming Ebony) Wesley writes with clear-eyed lyricism about her ruthless and beleaguered homeland, and the bittersweet relief and loss of the diaspora. Her poems are scintillating and vivid… –Booklist *starred review* (about Becoming Ebony) About the Author Patricia Jabbeh Wesley is a survivor of the Liberian Civil War that ravaged the country from 1989-2003. Besides her most recent book, Where the Road Turns, she is the author of three previous books of poetry, The River is Rising (published by Autumn House Press), Becoming Ebony and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa. Currently at work on her memoir of the Liberian Civil War, Patricia teaches English, Creative Writing, and African Literature at Penn State University, Altoona. She lives in Pennsylvania with her family. |
