Roll Deep: Poems - Hardcover

Jackson, Major

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393246892 ISBN 13: 9780393246896

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015

Synopsis

This breakthrough volume appropriates the vernacular notion of “rolling deep” to explore human intimacy and war.

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?

About this title

About the Author

Major Jackson is the author of six volumes of poetry. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review and the host of the podcast The Slowdown, Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393246892
• ISBN 13: 9780393246896
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 96