The Woodstock Sandal and Further Steps reveals the growth of a poet’s mind is inseparable from where, when, and with whom these poems take place over fifty years’ time.  Rock and roll music festivals in 1960s America unexpectedly lead to decades-long feasts on modern and classical Western learning, which just as suddenly give way to languages coming from Africa, all the way back through the ruins to where gods of the Red Sea came from and to those there now.  Yet the never seen or imagined before, the unknown, is like the one god who moves this poet most.   It can be strange or familiar:  the strange in one’s own garden, a favorite tree, old friends; the familiar in an eternal moment, a great poet’s grave, the common door between life and death.  Joining poetic line and story line, lyric and length, autobiography and cultural history, The Woodstock Sandal and Further Steps, like all great poetry, takes steps never taken before.

About the Author

Charles Cantalupo, Distinguished Professor at The Pennsylvania State University, is the author of other books of poetry as well as translations, essays, memoir, and scholarly books on Thomas Hobbes, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and Eritrean poetry.

Category: Literature, Poetry, Cultural Studies /AFRICA/US

Trim size: 5 X 7"

Page count: 148

Publication date: 2021