Shipping Menu

Resources & Shopping:

HEADLINE NEWS

International Oil And Shipping Take Fire In A Hard Fought Session - Investor's Business Daily (subscription)
International Oil And Shipping Take Fire In A Hard Fought Session
Investor's Business Daily (subscription) - Jan 7, 2009
The only group to come remotely close, in terms of volume, was the Agricultural Operations group. It gained 1.4% in better than three times average trading, ...

GateHouse News Service - Daily News Tribune
GateHouse News Service
Daily News Tribune, MA - 10 hours ago
Got Books provides all books and also handles and pays for all labor and shipping costs. Information: www.GotBooks.com; 978-396-6026. ...

Newsfeeds by Google

Shipping Online Store

Shipping Terms Books:
Splay Anthem

Today's shopping tips: "Be wise in purchasing ..... find best value one"

---

Books

Publisher: New Directions
List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $7.41
You Save: $ 8.54 ( 54% )
(prices subject to change)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

Customer Ratings:

In a stunning new collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Nathaniel Mackey's "asthmatic song of aspiration" scuttles across cultures and histories—from America to Andalucía, from Ethiopia to Vienna—in a sexy, beautiful adaptive dance.

Part antiphonal rant, part rhythmic whisper, Nathaniel Mackey's new collection of poems, Splay Anthem, takes the reader to uncharted poetic spaces. Divided into three sections—"Braid," "Fray," and "Nub" (one referent Mackey notes in his stellar Introduction: "the imperial, flailing republic of Nub the United States has become, the shrunken place the earth has become, planet Nub")—Splay Anthem weaves together two ongoing serial poems Mackey has been writing for over twenty years, Song of the Andoumboulou and "Mu" (though "mu no more itself / than Andoumboulou").

In the cosmology of the Dogon of West Africa, the Andoumboulou are progenitor spirits, and the song of the Andoumboulou is a song addressed to the spirits, a funeral song, a song of rebirth. "Mu," too, splays with meaning: muni bird, Greek muthos, a Sun Ra tune, a continent once thought to have existed in the Pacific. With the vibrancy of a Miró painting, Mackey's poems trace the lost tribe of "we" through waking and dreamtime, through a multitude of geographies, cultures, histories, and musical traditions, as poetry here serves as the intersection of everything, myth's music, spirit lift.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.53
EAN: 9780811216524
ISBN: 0811216527
Label: New Directions
Manufacturer: New Directions
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 112
Publication Date: 2006-05-30
Publisher: New Directions
Studio: New Directions


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Native Guard
• Bass Cathedral
• WHATSAID Serif
• Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
• Wild Iris


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: The river of words.
Comment: Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006)

There is a (very) short list of poets I keep in the back of my head whom I believe every "performance" poet, "slam" poet, and "spoken word artist" should read-- those poets whose work is offered in the same performance-oriented vein, but still works first and foremost as poetry. I have added Nathaniel Mackey to the list, for Splay Anthem is the epitome of this style of writing-- it sounds great when you read it aloud, and stands up when you read it on the page. Mackey has not forgotten that poetry is, first and foremost, about the sound (where so many of these others are so concerned with the message they're trying to get across that I often wonder if whether it sounds good ever enters their heads), and man, it sounds good:

"Vibrating string held us together,/hostage, nubs what before were/fingers albeit we plucked at it/even so, a subdued drum pounding/past/words, words' amanuensis...Packed up,/departed, booked... 'Cold water/and dirt,' a voice we heard sang,/wasted."
("Song of the Andomboulou: 44")

This is great stuff, made all the more interesting by Mackey's erudite (and quite illuminating) introduction, which traces, in an impressionist kinda way, a string of influences that led to the poems we have here. All the messages that the performance poets are so hot to make sure we humans understand are in this book, but-- and this is the important part, kiddies-- they never get in the way of the poetry itself. And that's what makes this such a fine piece of work. Should be required reading for aspiring poets with messages, and highly recommended for everyone else, too. ****
Customer Rating:
Summary: a poet's singing
Comment: the river that runs thru it, thru all of it, it being the writings of nathaniel mackey, his poetry and what prose i've read by him, is jazz, mostly free jazz. poetry on the page when it professes to be music, a specific music, unless the specific piece intended is present, or known by the reader, is there for the mercy of individual interpretation. and i seriously doubt in such instances that any two readers will hear the same music, except in say, a very generalized listening, or listenings, then, at best, there's some consensus: yes, this is jazz i hear when i read these poems.

i believe any and all poetry in hand should, whenever possible, be read aloud, so the rhythms of the poetry, the arrangement of iamb and anapest, of assonance and alliteration, as arranged by the poet can come fully into play, with a turning on of the medium, and the reader as listener to one's own voice speaking or chanting or singing the poet's words fits the reading. now whatever music is heard may or may not have reference to specific recorded music heard somewhere in the listener's experience.

words refer. mackey uses the word 'splay' as having multiple meanings, as with 'mu', one meaning refers to 2 don cherry recordings. mu, along with song of andoumboulou, are 2 ongoing serial poems by mackey, braided together under the title 'splay anthem.' mackey writes in his preface that each was given its impetus by a piece of music from which it takes its title.

what can be annoying about mackey's projects, not just his poetry, is that everything he creates remains in flux, and, as such, is inconclusive. fortunately, he continues where he left off. and fortunately, enjoyment of his books does not rely on having read other books in the 'series'.

the true pleasures of mackey's writing in general, and splay anthem in particular, are the rhythms of his language, the imagery he creates which remains long after the reading, and his generousity in sharing his knowledge and love of jazz. his preface should be read for his remarks on the saxophonist, glenn spearman.

---

NOTE: All online transactions are processed at Amazon.com's secure server,
using the latest technology on internet's secure transactions.
More on: Value Added Tax (VAT), Value Chain Management, Vendee, Vendor, Vessel, Volume Charge, Voyage, Voyage Charter, Voyage Number, Waiver Clause, War Risk, Warsaw Convention, Waste Logistics, Waybill, Weight Charge, Wharf, Wharfage, Yard, Yaw, Yawl Yield Management, York-Antwerp Rules, Zodiac, Zone Improvement Plan.