av福利社

In Aurora Americana, Myronn Hardy, an American poet who moved back to the United States after living for years in Morocco, reflects on exile and return as he describes the experience of leaving North Africa and rediscovering a North America both recognizable and unrecognizable. What does it mean to feel exiled both away from and at 鈥渉ome鈥�? What does it mean to miss something?

In forms such as the sonnet, ghazal, and triolet, Aurora Americana takes up the distant and recent past of the United States, from Thomas Jefferson to the deadly 鈥淯nite the Right鈥� march in Charlottesville, Virginia. But the book also meditates on smaller, momentary encounters across racial and national barriers, from evocations of Francophone Africa to a screening of Black Panther in Portugal for a mostly white audience. Allusions to Fannie Lou Hamer, Frantz Fanon, Prince, John Coltrane, Alessandro de鈥� Medici, Ahmed Zaki, Modesto Brocos y G贸mez, Nasser Zefzafi, and others anchor the collection. With poems set at or near dawn, Aurora Americana explores an ominous yet hopeful new morning in America, one in which potential cataclysm exists alongside possibility and change.