WHATSAID Serif - Softcover

Mackey, Nathaniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0872863417 ISBN 13: 9780872863415

Publisher: City Lights Publishers, 2001

Synopsis

Whatsaid Serif, Nathaniel Mackey’s third book of poems, is comprised of installments sixteen through thirty-five of Song of the Andoumboulou, an ongoing serial work whose first fifteen installments appear in Eroding Witness and School of Udhra, his two previous books. Named after a Dogon funeral song whose raspy tonalities prelude rebirth, Song of the Andoumboulou has from its inception tracked interweavings of lore and livid apprehension, advancing this weave as its own sort of rasp. These twenty new installments evoke the what-sayer of Kakapalo storying practice as a figure for the rough texture of such interweaving. Mackey has suggested that the Andoumboulou, a failed, earlier form of human being in Dogon cosmology, are “a rough draft of human being,” that “the Andoumboulou are in fact us; we're the rough draft.” The song is of possibility, yet to be fulfilled, aspiration’s putative angel itself.

"Nathaniel Mackey's poem is a brilliant renewal of and experiment with the language of our spiritual condition and a measure of what poetry gives in trust—'heat's/mean' and the rush of language to bear it."—Robin Blaser

"Mackey's raspy rebus-like cultural resurfacings are both beautiful to read and worthy of repeated efforts at comprehension."—Publishers Weekly

Nathaniel Mackey, recipient of a 1993 Whiting Writers’ Award, is the author of School of Udhra and Atet A.D., both also published by City Lights Publishers. He won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006, was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2014, and won Yale's Bollingen Prize for American Poetry in 2015. He teaches a poetry workshop at Duke University.

About this title

About the Author

Nathaniel Mackey, recipient of a 1993 Whiting Writers’ Award, is the author of School of Udhra and Atet A.D., both also published by City Lights Publishers. He won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006, was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2014, and won Yale's Bollingen Prize for American Poetry in 2015. He teaches a poetry workshop at Duke University.

Review

Another He, No Longer The Same
Antiphon Island's Imagined
Apocryphal Book Of The Loquat
Arrived Late In A Land Known As
Asked Had He Been Hit He
B'us Was Code For Buzz. Buzz
Believed We Had Risen
Echoed An Earlier Echo...'cuando
In Wrack Tavern We Raised Our Glasses
Name Ad Nauseam Stood In Our Way, Was
Nastic Swell. Gnostic Dispatch
A Red, Yellow And
Rift We Called
Runaway Band Run Out Of
Said By Some To Have Been Its Own
Seven-sided
She No Longer The She Who'd
Something Said In My Sleep
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 16
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 17
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 18
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 19
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 20
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 21
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 22
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 23
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 24
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 25
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 26
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 27
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 28
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 29
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 30
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 31
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 32
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 33
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 33 1/2
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 34
Song Of The Andoumboulou: 35
Sound
Stra Hajj Was Behind Us Now
Sun Cult. Cargo Cult. Pharoh's
Sung
Though Once We Set Out Suppressed
We Were Running, I Away
We Who Will Have Been
Went Now By Two New Names
Wept Adhesion, The Way Of The Kaluli.
Whatever It Was We Were
Who Were Drowning, Dreaming It
Wondered Would We Ever
-- Table of Poems from Poem FinderŪ

About this edition

• Publisher: City Lights Publishers
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0872863417
• ISBN 13: 9780872863415
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112