Jackson, Major

United States, (b. 1968)

YOU, READER

  1. So often I dream of the secrets of satellites,
  2. and so often I want the moose to step
  3. from the shadows and reveal his transgressions,
  4. and so often I come to her body
  5. as though she were Lookout Mountain,
  6. but give me a farmers’ market to park my martyred masks
  7. and I will name all the dirt roads that dead-end
  8. at the cubist sculpture called My Infinity,
  9. for I no longer light bonfires in the city of adulterers
  10. and no longer smudge the cheeks of debutantes
  11. hurriedly floating across the high fruit of night,
  12. and yes, I know there Is only one notable death in any small town
  13. and that is the pig farmer, but listen, at all times
  14. the proud rivers mourn my absence, especially
  15. when, like a full moon, you, reader, hidden behind a spray
  16. of night-blooming, drift in and out of scattered clouds
  17. above lighthouses producing their artificial calm,
  18. just to sweep a chalk of light over distant waters.

 Major Jackson. The Absurd Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Company (2020).

November in Xichang
There are cities one won’t see again.— Joseph Brodsky
(an excerpt)

  1. VI.
  2.  
  3. We steel ourselves despite the filigreed
  4. air, sunlight rendering more real the horror,
  5. our cameras pointing to blood gushing like water
  6. in a rural courtyard. Circled around a table,
  7. our senses empty as fast as lacquer goblets fill.
  8. Nearby, behind a cage, preparing himself for the playbill
  9. featuring himself, a pig practices his squealing
  10. last act. New Year’s Day, “Ku Shi” in Yi,
  11. six invisible days but first a slaughter.

 Major Jackson. World Literature Today. Summer 2019 | Poetry. https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/

About the Poet:

Major Jackson, United States, (b. 1968), is a poet, editor and educator. He is the author of five collections of poetry: The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002).

He earned degrees from Temple University and the University of Oregon. Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He also serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

His poems and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry London, Orion Magazine, The Yale Review, and other fine publications. His poetry has also received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, World Literature Today, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. [DES-05/22]

 • Biographies here are short. Yet all the poets presented have fascinating lives. And they have created a bountiful trough of treasures beyond these works. Please root on about those you enjoy! I hope you find something informative, meaningful or that provokes your further contemplation.

Additional information:

From the Porkopolis Archive:

  • Read Ellen Welcker’s ‘Slop’ which she says was based after Major Jackson’s ‘You, Reader’ above.

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