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 humour 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.

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.

Reviews
"Extraordinary...Jackson has created a new poetry of praise." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Major Jackson wants art to 'Blow / back the ordinary / jive of planet Earth,' and his new poems roil and buckle, skitter and swerve, clot and spill out into the world. Roll Deep is his fourth and best book; his voice seems to have broken loose, allowing for all manner of praise and lament, for observation and meditation, the grim and the goofball, and for outbreaks of pure sorcery, where 'punctuation is my jury and the moon is my judge.'" -- Mark Doty "Major Jackson's fourth collection of poetry, Roll Deep, juxtaposes the physical and the metaphysical, the external and the internal where the landscape and the mind of the poet converge until time bends. The imagery travels through a timely multiplicity, always surefooted and attuned, but never outdistancing the natural truth in this cosmopolitan voice. The poet writes the world he encounters, and imagines, with playfully deep interplay. The music in the language of Roll Deep is seductively straightforward, and each body-brain poem here puts genius squarely on the line." -- Yusef Komunyakaa



Book Information
ISBN 9780393353624
Author Major Jackson
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 125g
Dimensions(mm) 211mm * 140mm * 10mm