Blue Fasa

Blue Fasa

Nathaniel Mackey, 1947-

Book - 2015

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Subjects
American poetry.
Published
New York : New Directions Publishing 2015.
[Place of publication not identified] : [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Nathaniel Mackey, 1947- (author)
Physical Description
xv, 155 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN
9780811224451
  • Preface
  • I. RAG
  • A Night in Jaipur
  • Stick City Bhajan
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 88
  • "An endless tunnel it seemed. So long..."
  • "Farewell said something, metafare some..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 89
  • "As with the old-time people, the..."
  • "Like limbo but not as low, ludic..."
  • "Down on all fours, footless. Thus..."
  • Moment's Gnosis
  • "I was moment's novice. Bubbles..."
  • "No time soon would they've let..."
  • "Went on about of-the-moment..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 91
  • "What he wouldn't have given, he was..."
  • Stick City Zazen
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 93
  • "Insofar as there was a they the horns..."
  • "What did we know and when did..."
  • Anabatic Jukebox
  • "Sprung polity's pneumatic jukebox..."
  • "Stood happy-sad at the sonic window..."
  • Beginning "We the Migrating They"
  • Door Peep Shall Not Enter
  • "When it was we I saw I saw..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 97
  • "The marine layer lay behind..."
  • "It was something Ed might've..."
  • "We pounded the heels of..."
  • Hofriyati Head Opening
  • "There were notes hung from..."
  • "A cracked head's hymnal sung..."
  • II. RAG
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 99
  • "Elegiac repose time cut..."
  • "'Please, please, Mr. Pinch,'..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 991/2
  • Anacoluthic Light
  • "I fell into dreamless Adantean..."
  • "Touched but unable to seize..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 101
  • "Dirt slid from cliffs as we..."
  • "Chthonic adornment lay..."
  • Oldtime Ending
  • "Stories told wanting to..."
  • The Overghost Ourkestra Plays for Lovers
  • "They were Mrs. Vex and Mr..."
  • "Had found themselves..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 104
  • "What with Brother and Mrs..."
  • "The parking lot might have been..."
  • "We knew no other way to say..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 104½
  • Sound and Supplement
  • "Sopranino grimace, grin. A..."
  • "'No civic remit, no pantied...'"
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 106
  • "Say-it-again said it again..."
  • Anabatic Ring Shout
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: 108
  • "A subdued cry caught in..."
  • "But my second body said..."
  • "I was love's own distant..."
  • Low Forest Rotation
  • "We were each caught with a..."
  • "Pine-branch batons fell into..."
  • "In soul's memory doffed hats..."
  • Song of the Andoumboulou: no
  • "Ohio fell away, we traveled..."
  • "Sophie moment more move than..."
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Mackey, winner of the 2006 National Book Award for poetry, "continues Nod House's continuation of Splay Anthem and the work that came before it" as he extends two interwoven and ongoing serial poems: Song of Andoumboulou and "Mu." Commanding in their cerebral and musical reach, the poems do not require knowledge of previous installments, though hints to the themes here are found in the collection's title, which references the West African griot tradition and jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham's song "Blue Bossa." Mackey's epic mode is one in which place, time, and personae collide and shapeshift, rendering a definitive origin or conclusion somewhat irrelevant. Indeed, this collection opens with a fraying of the self, first pulled apart by love, as the bereft narrator laments, "Insofar, this/ was to say, as there was an I it was/ no other, of late letting go no getting/ out. I saw myself I saw, no parallel/ track." The "Insofar-I" construction reverberates throughout as quasimythic travelers are shaped and taken apart by forces personal, historical, environmental, and metaphysical. What exists always exists in relationship to its negation, opening an elastic space in which form and dissolution maintain a fast-paced, flexible dialectic dance. Mackey tracks a knowledge "gone by the time we heard/ it, galactic light's late arrival/ an acoustic stand-in, light-year-like/ but shrunken. Moment's remit/ an/ odd sonic perfume." The book itself follows in this pattern of continual departures, sustained in Mackey's remarkable erudition and singular lyric virtuosity. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Mackey's hip, dense language is cued to a global soundtrack as he reengages with two serial poems that snake through his earlier works: "Song of the Andoumboulou" and "Mu." Improvisation is key, as is surrender to the journey, in this meandering saga of Pynchon-esque characters enveloped in strains of "Blue Bossa" (a jazz standard written by Kenny Dorham): "Something Vedic on the box,/ box or no box, sat ourselves/ down siphoning music./ Place played harmonium." Motifs recur, punctuated by a car crash: the polysemic stick city (as in the poem "Stick City Zazen"); the subhuman, subterranean Andoumboulou creatures of myth invented by the Fasa of Ghana; mu as the root of many words, including muse; the Zar cult of Sudan; incessant movement. The box-juke, boom, radio-is the life that one carries through an endless odyssey of migration: "with a box on our head we called/ home,/ box more hat than/ home." Mackey has won numerous honors, including a National Book Award for Splay Anthem in 2006. His work evokes overtones of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Michael Ondaatje, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Don Cherry-the list may be endless. VERDICT A tale of improvisation and continuation whose poetics are a trip in every sense of that word.-Ellen Kaufman, New York © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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