WEBLINES

"And in your utmost imaginings/ I began new weavings// spinning rainbow cloths from history's rubble." Agard grew up in Guyana and now lives in England; his accessible, syncopated verse, in dialect and in standard English is well-suited to his own oral performance. Weblines combines a book's worth of new poems, focused on the spider and trickster figure Anansi, with generous selections from Agard's last two volumes, Limbo Dancer in Dark Glasses and Man to Pan. Alter egos and folktale motifs from West Africa join with modern immigrant experience: readers discover "How Wisdom and Commonsense Were Scattered," "How Tiger Played Dead and How Anansi Played Along," and how Anansi means to "apply to the law of the loom/ to warp and weft of bedroom." (July)