The God Botherers Poems

Here in metastable narratives that channel voices of conscience and impious presence, what demands a proper profanation is not so much an absconding god as varied avatars of immanent godhood from which man must wrest sovereignty: colonial gods, the Western logos, the empirical father, the capitalist axiomatic, reified existence, the ruling class, and the lionized but flawed figures of history. The poet endeavors to surpass them in an uncertain attempt that may not in the final instance leave him unscathed. —Jorge Sanjines With striking vision and exquisite language, Noli Manaig's The God Botherers strips away layers of “tinsel men and women” to reveal the poignantly idealized, profane versions of lives restlessly stored in the chloroformed dreams of humanity's soul. His use of the grotesque, the seemingly disparate and counterintuitive images to instantiate a transvaluation of values, brings to life a startling critique on the erstwhile sacred, the untouchable guise of gods. —Camille