Logotherapy

Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an assistant professor of English at Cornell University. His books include the novel Black Star Nairobi and the poetry collection Hurling Words at Consciousness.

“Ngugi’s poetry, like the poet himself, is the product of a lifetime suspended between disparate locations. In Logotherapy the reader finds him pursuing meaning in his memories and experiences stretched between the urban jungles of Nairobi and Boston alike. His measured lines unspool precisely and draw the reader into the landscapes that his imagination inhabits.”-World Literature Today“Mukoma’s energetic voice leaps out of poems that roll effortlessly and often joyously off the tongue. They are a wonderful adventure into his world of family and friendship, history, memory, and the imagination.”-Bernardine Evaristo, author of Mr. Loverman and Hello Mum

• Acknowledgments    I. To Give a Word a NamePreface: Hunting Words with My Father    Ancestries of Land Mines    Keys    My Two Names    To Our Unborn Child Whom We Shall Name Nyambura    In Your Name    A Moment between Writing    An Orange    Pepto Bismol    Multiplicity and Skins    Safe House    II. Shadows and LightShadows and Light in Play    The Clouds Above    A Walk amongst Shadows with Sandra    Perfect Silence Is When Each Thing Sings Itself    Geysers and Hot Springs    Bifocals    New Frontiers: Wisconsin Winter    I. Excerpts from an Immigrant’s Diary    III. Whispers and TendrilsFirst Meetings    First Date    Framing Your Picture    Framing a Second Picture    Guttural Love    Love and Distance    Leper’s Gold    Nostalgia I    Nostalgia II    A Poem Written in Silence    Last Frames    IV. RemembrancesA Poem for Arthur Nortje and Other Lost African Poets    Welcoming Mortality Home    My Grandfather’s Hands    Letter to My Artist Friend Who Died Young    Eight Months and Two Days Loading Trucks at UPS    Logotherapy    To My Archeologist    V. Gifts of ViolenceGifts of Violence    Faith    JailBirds    Fall    To the Driver Who Splashed Me with Rainwater    Dread Locks    Revolt    Prints of Genocide    I Swear I See Skulls Coming    Kenya: A Love Letter    This Is What I Know    Epilogue: On Reading the Poem I Should Have Written