Holding Company: Poems

Description

“Major Jackson makes poems that rumble and rock.”—Dorianne Laux

In Holding Company, Major Jackson explores art, literature, and music as a kingdom, or an empire, a dark, seductive force in our lives. In an effort to understand desire, beauty, and love as transient anodynes to metaphysical loneliness, he invokes Constantine Cavafy, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, and Dante Rossetti.

from “Jewel-Tongued”
   The stillness of a lover’s mouth

   assaulted me. I never wearied of anecdotes

   on the Commons, gesturing until I scattered

   myself into a luminance, shining over a city

   of women. Was I less human or more? I hear still

   my breathing echoing off their pillows. So many

   eyes like crushed flowers. Our fingers splayed

   over a bed’s edge. We were blown away.