In Star Witness, Orlando Ferrand’s rite of passage, the poet lets his personal experiences serve as fuel to ruminate about issues directly related to the human condition. He tells his story with the hope that we may formulate our own questions and consider deeper truths. Does the soul have a gender? Is there a universal identity beyond our ethnic ancestry? Can knowledge become wisdom in our journey on Earth?

Through the retelling of some ancient tales, superstitions, Judeo-Christian legends and motifs, as well as biographical impersonations in the midst of devastation and hope, the poet contends with circumstances revolving around the highs and lows of love and loss, the violence often associated with lust, the alienation experienced by those in exile, and other acute existential crises, and wrestles at the same time with the possibility that we may be living in the twilight of human civilization.

Some of the poems in Star Witness were written while the poet traveled the cosmos to visit modern cities and the sites of ancient civilizations, and other poems in the volume were written within the partitions of New York City’s outer boroughs. This third full-length book of poetry by Orlando Ferrand is a tour de force.