With Nathaniel Mackey's fifth collection of poems, Nod House, we witness a confluence of music and meaning unprecedented in American poetry. Mackey's art continues to push the envelope of what is possible to map and remap through words in sounds and sounds in words. Picking up with Nub's disintegration at the end of his previous collection - the National Book Award-winning Splay Anthem - we follow a traveler and a tribe of travelers ensconced in myth and history as Mackey continues to weave his precisely measured music with two ongoing serial poems, Song of the Andoumboulou and Mu. The collec- tion is divided into two sections, both titled "Quag," and it is this double-Quag ("Nub's new colony Quag" or Qraq or Ouab'da or Quaph . . .) that the tribe is exiled in, worlds within alternate worlds where names and places are ever-shifting, and dreamlessness reigns. From the pyramids to the projects, Ivory Coast to Lone Coast, Lagos to Stick City, amidst chorusing horns and star-spar lightning, Nod House ("Nub's / new / address") unfolds as gorgeous eulogy, copla-cuts of deep song, the long elegiac march of "day after day of the dead."

About the Author
Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida in 1947. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, and has received many awards for his work, including the National Book Award in poetry for Splay Anthem, the Stephen Henderson Award from the African American Literature and Culture Society, and the Bollingen Prize from the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Mackey is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University, and edits the literary journal Hambone.

Reviews
"In oblique, elliptical fashion, these poems follow the dispersal of African peoples by half a millennium of catastrophes, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina...Mackey's almost mythological conception has its origins in his previous collection, "Splay Anthem," which won a National Book ward in 2006. But no prior knowledge is required, as the logic is surreal and the characters keep circling back to "square one."



Book Information
ISBN 9780811219464
Author Nathaniel Mackey
Format Paperback
Page Count 144
Imprint New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publisher New Directions Publishing Corporation
Weight(grams) 232g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm