In Holding Company, Major Jackson explores art, literature, and music as a kingdom, or an empire, a dark, seductive force in our lives. In an effort to understand desire, beauty, and love as transient anodynes to metaphysical loneliness, he invokes Constantine Cavafy, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, and Dante Rossetti.
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“Starred Review: This powerful book represents a painful but inspired journey.” — Publishers Weekly
In Hoops, Major Jackson continues to mine the solemn marvels of ordinary lives: a grandfather gardens in a tenement backyard; a teacher unconsciously renames her black students after French painters. The substance of Jackson's art is the representation of American citizens whose heroic endurance makes them remarkable and transcendent.
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“Lush reflections on ordinary lives, displaying "formal talents and [Jackson's] capacity for expanding the lyric potential of narrative.”
—(Rain Taxi)
Leaving Saturn, chosen by Al Young as the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, is an ambitious and honest collection. Major Jackson, through both formal and free verse poems, renders visible the spirit of resilience, courage, and creativity he witnessed among his family, neighbors, and friends while growing up in Philadelphia.
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“An ambitious debut, for which Major Jackson has coined an idiom and music all his own.” —Carl Phillips