“The Naming is the story of surrender, how the child surrenders to the parent, and the adult to the infant. Thus, Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto creates themself, a poet, a multiplicity of voices, in language that is familiar but entirely new. Beginning with incantations, the collection seems to collect from antiquity and carry the reader on a current of sound through actual historical moments, reverie, confession, and fantasy. The poems recraft the traditional dialogue between life and magic, to the disturbances of the present, in a language that is vivid and resonant. These poems deliver us to the knowledge of what it means to be human, and African, in humor and reverence and wonder.”—Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, author of The Everyday Wife and ice cream headache in my bone

“Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto’s The Naming engraves in language lineages that whisper through his fingers. And thus, he never separates himself from the grounding of his spiritual force fields. These poems, of such interior strength and wonder, intone wisdoms only found on the outskirts of our parochial facades. The result? The Naming makes peace with historical wounds and spurs us to live in complete astonishment.”—Major Jackson, author of Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002–2022 and The Absurd Man