Sanctificum by Chris Abani

Sanctificum Reviews

• 
  Trish

  This is my favorite among Abani’s published poetry collections and I think it might be because it is completely accessible. One doesn’t have to know anything about Chris Abani to understand the language and heartache and courage. “Om” appears first and has seven parts on five pages. I take one phrase from each:

  "I never told anyone that every sliver of orange I ate
  was preceded by words from high mass…"
  and
  "The dog’s black tongue was more terrifying than its teeth."
  and
  "Sorrow lodged like a splintered bullet next to the heart."
  and
  "Sand, where there is no water, can ablute,
  washing grain by grain even the hardest stone of sin."
  and
  "The way a photograph cannot remember the living."
  and
  "Sanctificum."

  
  Abani can talk about sadness, about places that are sad, without being sad:

  A LETTER TO ROBERT PINSKY
  
  This is wood, enchanted wood.
  Still the fire scorches and we say wood
  still the pain burns from the club
  and then we say wood
  still the planks dovetail and we caress
  the smooth and the rough
  sensuous, delectable, and yet sorrowful
  and then we say wood.

  My favorite poem is too long to quote, twelve sections on ten pages, called “Pilgrimage.” It talks of words and their meanings, faith and its lack, history and hope, fear and courage, love and rage. Well, I will quote just a little because it speaks to the sadness without being sad:

  "Some may call me a pessimist, but I am not.
  There is nothing gained from loss.
  I drink tea in the shade and believe in poetry.
  I am a zealot for optimism."

  In a short poem near the end called “Dew,” Abani writes

  "My desire is struggling up the mountain.
  My fear is a shower of pebbles.
  Your son is trying to be a good man, Mum.
  Your son is going to be all right.
  There are no names for red."

  That is not the poem in its entirety, and it does not end there. But that phrase that appears again and again in Abani’s work is perplexing to me. I don’t know what he means, “there are no names for red.”
  
  The real strength in Abani’s work is his willingness to see and not be ruined by the seeing. He has enough reserves to still give succor to those of us stumbling along beside him. "I have always envied the stigmata," he tells us of those wounds that will not heal…"I want to put my fingers in the wounds and swirl them around." And so he does.
• 
  Lauren

  I am a zealot for optimism.
  - from "Pilgrimage"
  
  I read Abani's short bio in the wonderful "The Face" series (
  The Face: Cartography of the Void) last year, and was very intrigued to read more of his writing. This National Poetry Month is the perfect time for that.
  Abani writes with such grace and understanding. He has a deep social consciousness and awareness (and was a political prisoner in Nigeria, imprisoned for his writings and criticisms of the government), and this permeates his poems. Sanctificum shares much about his Nigerian and Igbo heritage.
  
  Highlights:
  -Revenant
  -Divination
  -Elephants
  -Processional
  -Descent
• 
  Liz

  2021 Reading Challenge: owned but unread
• 
  Rachelfm

  Wow. Poetry as craft rather than spewed fridge magnets or obtuse navel gazing. Meaningful, riveting, relevant.
• 
  Andrada

  I recently read and enjoyed Chris Abani’s essay
  The Face: Cartography of the Void and decided to give his other writing a chance. I settled on Sanctificum which touches on similar themes as his autobiographical essay. In it, Abani navigates the trauma of his past incarceration, his relationship to his parents and his childhood memories against the backdrop of his current mundane life in the US. The violence of the world and his own past haunt him, but he remains a confessed optimist, often prone to love and longing, with a strong belief in the cleansing power of poetry.
• 
  Akshay

  I haven't reread many books, but I think this one I will definitely go back to. If not for anything else, for the way the lines sound in my mouth. Abani pours pain and delight into eachother so much that it startled me at random intervals as I read the poems. There's a lot of depth and subtlety that I cherish in this collection.
• 
  AB Raiford

  top 10
• 
  Shawn Aebi

  Struggles with violence, with the new mannerisms in a distracted country, and mostly struggles with the peace that religion pursues.
• 
  lancelot

  read this and chris abani will tell you everything about tenderness and sorrow. this is the body of christ. sanctificum.
• 
  Nick

  Haunting verse by a poet who spans several continents and cultures, and handles them all with grace.
  
  By an African roadside, a woman
  more skeleton than flesh squats.
  Death wears down her resistance.
  The sun tries to be merciful.
  
  Abani's spare, unflinching verse helps you see these several worlds in new ways.
  
  I don't know why I sing
  in languages I cannot understand.
  Fast-moving trains draw time ahead and
  then there is the sea and the blue kite of horizon;
  a perfect chalice for night
  and the communion sliver of moon.
  
  Chris Abani's work is both an ambassadorship and an offering of peace.
• 
  Sally

  Powerful juxtaposition of image and utterance. So lovely--the pacing in this series is deft, the voice is intimate and speaks of family life, theological disillusionment, and political violence at once, movingly and successfully. Poems about Nigeria, Palestine, the U.S., the problems of ever knowing/reaching the memory of one's father and mother, of love and grief--and such terrific use of metaphor. These poems will break you open.
• 
  Henry Marchand

  Read Chris Abani. Watch and listen to him read on YouTube. Watch and listen to him read in person if you can. This is a writer who matters. Poetry or prose, his use of language is masterful, his imagination and capacity for empathy apparently boundless. This book of poems is a fine place to make his acquaintance. Read it and you will read more of his work.
• 
  Kate Vogl

  Beautiful and elegiac and powerful. I heard him at a reading for Hamline's Water-Stone Summer Workshop and have been looking forward to this read since then. Jotted down so many lines I wanted to remember. Loved it all.
• 
  Naomi

  I have always loved Abani's work. But this. But this.
  Holy, holy, holy.
  
  And fun to see names in the poem I know.
• 
  Stacy

  I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
  
  http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/3734498
• 
  Christina Olivares

  yes, yes. love everything this man writes.
• 
  cowgirl sushi

  I love Chris Abani.
• 
  kourtney erin

  stunning
• 
  Echezonachukwu Nduka

  Excellent poetry.