Desire Path is a sweeping exploration of nationhood and small communities across cultural landscapes and national boundaries. In praise of community, these poems are invested in examining everyday life through personal narratives, oral tradition, and collective memory. In this collection, individual and communal disquiet opens to eros, spirituality, and haunting joy. At once an elegy, ode, and fable, this collection pleats numerous lives: a boy sent to the shops, a neighborhood thief, omens, widows, dreamers, gravediggers, debtors, and inheritors. There are multifoliate Englishes and silences, as well as glimpses of music by icons such as Bi Kidude and Kanda Bongo Man. There is endurance, nourishment, and storytelling here.
