The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English

While crowds admire South Asian and African novelists like Rushdie or Achebe, American readers academic and otherwise don't care enough about verse from developing nations. Jahan Ramazani (Poetry of Mourning) hopes to change all that with The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English. In cogent and illuminating chapters, Ramazani (who teaches at the University of Virginia) considers both the cultural work and the aesthetic choices of five key poets, among them Louise Bennett (Jamaica), Okot p'Bitek (Uganda), A.K. Ramanujan (India) and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. (Oct.)