Rise

by A. Van Jordan

Winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award

In this superb and eagerly anticipated debut collection by the young African American poet A. Van Jordan, the energy and music of Jordan's language, his honesty of feeling and of truth telling, are matched by his freshness and power. His stuff shines, sweat pours off it, says Joy Harjo. And there is a kind of solidity and reality in Jordan's poems that display varieties of experience and depths of meditation too rarely found in contemporary American poetry.

Genres: Poetry

94 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Vanessa Thompson]

I meet the author in Harlem. I never heard of the author or book. I have a signed copy. The joke he heard me say my name is Veronica instead of Vanessa.

I enjoyed the book, brought meaning to life for me.

[Christina Olivares]

Fabulosity squared. Van is an amazing, amazing poet.

[Greg Bem]

My head responded with jazz tones and jazz tongues, and I remembered ten, more, years ago thoroughly, as a child, and how I stayed the same as well.

[Dawn Trlak-Donahue]

This was a mixture of brilliance and just ok.

[Jared]

4.5/5

[Cedric]

Good stuff. The first poem in the book is perhaps the best, about a confrontation w/ a nut in a bar. I learned from this book that I'm not a jazz poet. I just don't know much about Mingus & Dizzy, so I can't relate much to the frequent jazz allusions. But this was a good read. Van's a real cool dude too, nice guy. Met him briefly as he visited my grad school.