In his fourth collection, a breakthrough volume, Major Jackson appropriates the vernacular notion of “rolling deep” to capture the spirit of aesthetic travel that defines these forceful new poems and brazenly announces his steady accretion of literary and artistic influences, both formal and experimental—his “crew.” The confident and radiant poems in Roll Deep address a range of topics, most prominently human intimacy and war. And like his best work to date, these poems create new experiences with language owed to Jackson’s willingness to once again seek a rhythmic sound that expresses the unique realities of the twenty-first century with humor and understanding. Whether set in Nairobi, Madrid, or Greece, the poems are sensuously evocative and unapologetically with-it, in their effort to build community across borders of language and style. From Urban Renewal, “The Dadaab Suite”: I have come to Dadaab like an actor on a press release, unprepared for the drained faces of famine-fleeing refugees, my craft’s glamour dimmed by hundreds of infant graves, children whose lolling heads’ final drop landed on their mothers’ backs like soft stones. What beauty can I spell in this swelter of dust?
Author
Major Jackson is an American poet and professor. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006), finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Award Circle. His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Poetry, and Tin House. His poetry has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Parnassus, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry 2004, The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, Schwerkraft, From the Fishouse, and The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. In 2013 he edited Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. [wikipedia]
