Migration (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
Poets
Search more than 3,000 biographies of contemporary and classic poets.
Major Jackson
1968–
Major Jackson was born and raised in Philadelphia, where he pursued his degree in accounting at Temple University.
In the late 1990s, he joined the Dark Room Collective, an organization that gave greater visibility to emerging and established writers of color and included Thomas Sayers Ellis, John Keene, Janice Lowe, Carl Phillips, Tracy K. Smith, Sharan Strange, Natasha Trethewey, Artress Bethany White, and Kevin Young, among others.
He is the author of five collections of poetry, including Absurd Man (W. W. Norton, 2020), Roll Deep (W. W. Norton, 2015), and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002), winner of the 2001 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
A recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He serves as the poetry editor of the Harvard Review, and the guest editor for a special series of Poem-a-Day from June 22–July 3, 2020.
Jackson teaches at University of Vermont, where he is the Richard A. Dennis Professor of English and University Distinguished Professor. He lives in South Burlington, Vermont.
Bibliography
Absurd Man (W. W. Norton, 2020)
Roll Deep (W. W. Norton, 2015)
Holding Company (W. W. Norton, 2010)
Hoops (W. W. Norton, 2006)
Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia, 2002)
By This Poet
9Picket Monsters (audio only)
Click the icon above to listen to this audio poem.
Letter to Brooks [Spring Garden]
1.
When you have forgotten (to bring into
Play that fragrant morsel of rhetoric,
Crisp as autumnal air), when you
Have forgotten, say, sun-lit corners, brick
Full of skyline, rowhomes, smokestacks,
Billboards, littered rooftops & wondered
What bread wrappers reflect of our hunger,
2.
When you have forgotten wide-brimmed hats,
Sunday back-seat leather rides & church,
The doorlock like a silver cane, the broad backs
Swaying or the great moan deep churning,
& the shimmer flick of flat sticks, the lurch
Forward, skip, hands up Ailey-esque drop,
When you have forgotten the meaningful bop,
3.
Hustlers and their care-what-may, blasé
Ballet and flight, when you have forgotten
Scruffy yards, miniature escapes, the way
Laundry lines strung up sag like shortened
Smiles, when you have forgotten the Fish Man
Barking his catch in inches up the street
"I've got porgies. I've got trout. Feeesh
4.
Man," or his scoop and chain scale,
His belief in shad and amberjack; when
You have forgotten Ajax and tin pails,
Blue crystals frothing on marble front
Steps Saturday mornings, or the garden
Of old men playing checkers, the curbs
White-washed like two lines out to the burbs,
5.
Or the hopscotch squares painted new
In the street, the pitter-patter of feet
Landing on rhymes. "How do you
Like the weather, girls? All in together girls,
January, February, March, April... "
The jump ropes' portentous looming,
Their great, aching love blooming.
6.
When you have forgotten packs of grape
Flavored Now & Laters, the squares
Of sugar flattening on the tongue, the elation
You felt reaching into the corner-store jar,
Grasping a handful of Blow Pops, candy bars
With names you didn't recognize but came
To learn. All the turf battles. All the war games.
7.
When you have forgotten popsicle stick
Races along the curb and hydrant fights,
Then, retrieve this letter from your stack
I've sent by clairvoyant post & read by light.
For it brought me as much longing and delight.
This week's Father's Day; I've a long ride to Philly.
I'll give this to Gramps, then head to Black Lily.
Related Poets
Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith is the poet laureate of the United States. She received the Academy of American...
Carl Phillips
Born on July 23, 1959, Carl Phillips's collection The Rest of Love won the Theodore...
Kevin Young
Kevin Young's poetry collections include Brown (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) and Book of...
Natasha Trethewey
Natasha Trethewey, who has served as both the state poet laureate of Mississippi and the U.S....
Thomas Sayers Ellis
Thomas Sayers Ellis is the author of Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair...