The Absurd Man: Poems

by Major Jackson

Inspired by the philosophy of Albert Camus, Major Jackson’s fifth volume subtly configures the poet as “absurd hero.” With intense musicality and buoyant lyricism, The Absurd Man follows the titular speaker as he confronts the struggle for meaning in a technological world and the difficulty of social and political unity, finding refuge in intellectual and sensuous passions. At once melancholic and jubilant, Jackson considers the journey of humanity, with all its foibles, as a sacred pattern of discovery reconciled by art and the imagination.


 


From “The Absurd Man at Fourteen”


He punched her again, a woman called the house,

some yelling then us out the door leaving

the kitchen phone cord swinging.

Genres: Poetry, 21st Century

112 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2020

About the author

Major Jackson is an American poet and professor. He is the author of four collections of poetry: Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006), finalist for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature-Poetry, and Leaving Saturn (2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Award Circle.

His poems have been published in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Poetry, and Tin House. His poetry has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Parnassus, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry 2004, The Pushcart Prize XXIX: Best of the Small Presses, Schwerkraft, From the Fishouse, and The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation. In 2013 he edited Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. [wikipedia]

Reviews

[Richard S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly entertaining and decent word choice but it felt kind of simplistic in parts and not even poetry in others. Let’s take a very ordinary sentence and turn it into three lines. Pretty much zero “crafting” of the poem. No ambiguity or sublimity. It did have a sort of energy to it.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much of this book felt like a steep, uphill hike to me. There were some lovely scenes and image along the way, but it required too much effort slogging through dense underbrush. It all pays off in the last section, though, the one from which (along with Camus) the book gets its title. The poems in this section are intimate, powerful, at times painful, and always introspective in a way that seems universal. The view from the peak is worth the journey.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Major Jackson is one of our most obviously philosophical and allusive poets. That is obvious in the title, which brings Camus to mind immediately, but also in the other influences that make it into the poems. There are many examples, but none more formative than the first poem ("Major and I") and the last one ("Double Major"), both of which play off the famous Borges prose piece "Borges and I," which ends "I don't know which of us two is writing this page." Major Jackson allows himself to be playful with this idea, but that doesn't change the fact that he is obviously interested in significant questions of identity and how those manifest themselves in poetry.

But Camus is the big influence here. I could quote all kinds of passages from "The Myth of Sisyphus" that would apply to these poems, but just from Camus's Preface -- "It is legitimate and necessary to wonder whether life has a meaning' and "even within the limits of nihilism is is possible to find the means to proceed beyond nihilism."

But Major Jackson writes poems. Sometimes he constructs narratives, although they are seldom completely straight forward. Sometimes he relies on literary allusion, and that keeps the reader stretching through his memory and imagination. He can write evocative images, and is not afraid of the "Big" line that goes after all the marbles. "He knocks repeatedly on the bolted door to his imagination./Tragically, he believes he can mend his wounds with his poetry."Or "I'm here guarding my freedom,/rubbing my hands over yesterday fires." And those are just from the last two poems in the Suite that gives the book it's title.

But I found poems to love in the earlier sections too. There are memorable elegies for Ntzake Shange and Derek Walcott here. There are travel poems that reflect the opportunities that once (preCovid) were given to successful American poets. And there are poems that turn on the landscape of Vermont, where this African-American poet has found himself, it seems to his own surprise. These are all wonderful additions to our moment, but I hope the title sequence finds a large audience, or what counts as one among readers of contemporary American poetry.

[Jessica]

“When the cashier asks, “How will / we be paying,” I pull out of my / front pocket, poems and more poems.”

—from poem “Play Money”

[Madeline Augusta Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

i cried most of the way through this book -- i am not someone who NEVER cries while reading but for a book to pull me so much is rare. i think much of what i want to hear at this point in my life (read also as: the culmination of all that which i am reading and writing myself) can be found here though i'm far from being in the same stage of life or of remotely the same life experience as major jackson. but there is a transcendence and a timelessness in this book through the way it navigates the intangibility laced within the starkly tangible. we are absurd in ourselves, those selves that collapse as they expand just as "soil overruns with honey" no matter where we taste it, or why. i read this quickly. and i will read it again.

[Chris]

This a great title. And a great book cover.
Jackson writes vividly. A poem like “Thinking Of Frost” captures an essence of life in these Northern climes, particularly, as I am acutely aware these days of how fast night falls as we approach the Equinox.
There is a lot of humor, a lot of honesty. Other times, I wonder at Jackson’s words. Their full comprehension alludes me on a first reading.

[Tom Romig · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Albert Camus's Myth of Sisyphus as his inspiration, Major Jackson launches an exploration of ways the poet struggles for purchase in an absurd world. Surprising, deft, trenchant. So many arresting images, such as this one in the litany of the troubles of the poor in "North Philadelphia": "one's house candled from a gambled paycheck."

[Greg11 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Major Jackson is like listening to a brilliant but somewhat absent father trying to explain something important. And you can only half follow him but you nod because you want him to think you get it. And once or twice you roll your eyes at the paternalistic bits and he notices but then you regret it. And you know that you’ll think about these words years later

[David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr. Jackson's poems are a delight, even when they are gruesome and uncomfortable. His ruminations are more biting than nostalgic, as if he wishes to remember fully the snippets of his past (and is unafraid to castigate himself when he cannot). A fine collection.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe because I had so many voices crowding my head for attention, but I struggled so much to keep coming back to this. I finally decided to call it, to come back another time when it can just be me and these poems. I couldn’t ever hear it calling me back.

[Thaddeus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful imagery and an excellent closing third (The Absurd Man Suite), Jackson scores with this volume. His closing lines nail the essence of this one: “He would like to tell you the truth about love. But we are going to bed, to bed.”

[Ariatna B. Mendoza · Rating 5 out of 5]

The absurd arises from the tension between our desire for order, meaning and happiness and, on the other hand, the refusal of the indifferent natural universe to provide that, that is what I interpret.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah. Now here’s a book of poetry selected strictly by the cover. And at no point as striking as a cover. It’s interesting, and I enjoyed some of it. It stands to mention I’m not greatly into modern poetry, so my opinions should be read as such—a casual reader’s thoughts.

[Sean Archer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok but not great.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eclectic, busy, loud. I believe Jackson has created a whole new genre/movement in the literary world. His work is a force to be reckoned with.

[Francescajemm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I especially loved the two poems that bookend the collection - “Major and I” and “Double Major,” for the ingenious way the poet challenges the idea of self.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Personal, emotionally stirring, riveting. Every line flows to the next in prose-poetic fashion.

[Bryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I could relate to a few of the poems, but most of them took too much work for me to want to try to understand them.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread of my favorite poetry book

[Anjali Chanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an honor it was to study under Major in undergrad, and an even greater honor to read his collection in its entirety.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

1/26
Sure. Okay. I wanted to love more. But the cover is perfect.