
African Poems Volume One: Àṣẹ Òrìṣà!: A Praise Anthology to Yorùbá Orishas, Rituals, Traditions and Wisdom
In the literate tradition of poetry, the poet's appeal to an audience is dual: namely, auditory and visual, the sound of words as spoken, as well as the words as set on paper. Today, in view of the modern world of increasing digital technology, the consequent tendency of the reader has shifted to reading poems privately, in their nooks/tablets, rather than listening to them at poetry recitals. Few authors, still venturing into the world of the printed pages, manage to keep alive the magic of the art of reading poetry directly from a physical book. In honor of this fading art, author Alex Cuoco created the African Poems Series to put into print a form of African art, the Yorùbá oral tradition of Oríkì, with the hopes of distancing it from the list of items threatened to fall into extinction. This poetry edition brings the reader a repertoire of magical evocations, startling imagery, mythological allusions, reclamations, outrages, reasoning and wisdom, all against the backdrop of Yorùbá