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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 Yoruba oral tradition of Oriki, 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 Yoruba poetry which is one of the world’s most fascinating literary traditions. African Poems Volume One: A Praise Anthology to Yoruba Orishas, Rituals, Traditions and Wisdom will delight the readers with its wealth of information on Yoruba Orisa religious beliefs that is presented in a spirited poetic form. This Anthology contains eight chapters and 317 poems in total. Chapter one, being the most extensive one, entitled: Praise to the Orishas, provides portraits of poetic praises, based on traditional Yoruba Oriki to different Orisa, divinities of the Yoruba pantheon. The following seven themed chapters, Divine Metamorphosis, Power and Traditions, Ritual Rising, Awaking the Spirits, Of Gods and Man, Call of the Gods and Reclaiming the Soil, contain sixteen poems each, embracing a variety of themes concerning different aspects of Yoruba traditional culture, rituals, traditions, social aspects and wisdom, written mostly, in free style poetry. It is common knowle
