The Adventures of Ibn Opcit
is a two-volume work by John Barr, first president of The Poetry Foundation.
Grace
, the first volume of this mock epic, is the master song of Ibn Opcit, a Caribbean gardener/poet condemned to die by torture. In a series of jailhouse monologues we hear him descant on justice, on creation, on America, on death and on life after death. In book two,
Opcit at Large
, the poet pushes back on his oppressors in three adventures. Like Virgil in the
Inferno
he visits the afterworld of reincarnation in “The Afterdammit;” he struggles to survive as poet laureate to Africa’s newest President for Life in “Opcit en Afrique;” he orbits earth as “The Last Cosmonaut” on the eve of the fall of the Soviet Union. He comes home with the dignity and strength of one who has survived and prevailed.