Konbit - (Carnegie Mellon University Press Poetry) by Sony Ton-Aime (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Poems that capture a transformative and visionary way of life in Haiti.

Konbit is a Haitian Creole word, a way of living, for which there is no direct translation in the English language. It captures the communal life in Haiti and is used for every event where neighbors are called upon to help each other. These poems revolve around the Bois-Caïman ceremony (the first konbit) when enslaved people in Saint-Domingue vowed to fight for their independence. The ceremony is both real and a stand-in for climate change. Like our society, everything around enslaved people in Saint-Domingue was created to uphold the status quo. Imagining an alternative would have been seen as futile. Yet, they did. This collection is an attempt to do the same, to imagine a future beyond colonialism, imperialism, and climate catastrophe. With poems influenced by and in conversation with Tyehimba Jess, Natasha Trethewey, Derek Walcott, Shara McCallum, and Adrian Matejka, Sony Ton-Aime aims to provide a new language to articulate our common past, present, and future.

Review Quotes

"'If we must start somewhere, ' Sony Ton-Aime writes in his brilliant debut collection, Konbit, 'let it be with death.' Unable to turn away from the fact of Colonial violence, Ton-Aime's poems mix myth, folklore, and religion in a multi-voiced passion play that dances through languages both inherited and repossessed. This book wields the entire gamut of contemporary form to give witness to some of history's bloodiest moments, stopping time to make room for the enemies of the state: quiet, vulnerability, and love. 'The crack where the light gets in, ' he writes, 'is your heart.' That's also the perfect metaphor for how these poems work: finding the crack in the reader's defenses to show them that beauty and violence are rarely, if ever, disconnected."-- "P. Scott Cunningham, author of Ya Te Veo"

"Sony Ton-Aime's gorgeous lyric sequence, Konbit, describes the events before, during, and after the Bois Caïman ceremony, by poetically rendering everything around the events, as if to posit that the only way to truly say, to confront, is to waterfall around the event so that the accumulation of language ripples to become the thing described. Ton-Aime writes, 'If we must start somewhere, let it be with death. But before that, we will live, ' as if to say that death is the center of everything, but between life and life. Out of oppression, war, and colonization, emerge these formally dexterous poems made of beautiful sentences."-- "Victoria Chang, author of With My Back to the World and OBIT"

"Sony Ton-Aime's Konbit is a marvel. This collection is so well-conceived that I am tempted to call it one poem. There is such control and still the poems sing. Ton-Aime's language surprises while establishing a familiarity that is nothing less than seduction."-- "Percival Everett, author of James, winner of the National Book Award"

"Sony Ton-Amie's Konbit offers a gathering of voices that, as the Kreyòl word implies, function as a collective in the face of disaster. Centred on the Haitian Revolution, the book retraces the narratives, figures, and dreams that shaped that history, one that echoes over two hundred years later when we speak of resistance and survival. Merging past, present, and future and with its redolent images and cadences, Konbit is an incantatory work."-- "Shara McCallum"

About the Author

Sony Ton-Aime is a Haitian poet, essayist, translator, and the executive director of Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures. Previously, he served as the Michael I. Rudell Director of Literary Arts at Chautauqua Institution. He is the author of the chapbook LaWomann, the Haitian Creole translation of Olympic Hero: The Lennox Kilgour's Story, co-author of the Haitian Creole course on Duolingo, and co-founding editor of ID13. His work has appeared in Artful Dodge, Consequence Forum, Poets.org, Idaho Review, Hunger Mountain Review, and Cleveland Review of Books, among others.