Rise

by A. Van Jordan

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781882688265
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2001
Edition description:	1
Pages:	94
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

In addition to Rise, which won the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, A. VAN JORDAN is the author of M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, which was listed as one the "Best Books of 2005" by the London Times, Quantum Lyrics, and The Cineaste. Jordan has been awarded a Whiting Writers Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a United States Artists Williams Fellowship, and the 2016 Lannan Literary Award in Poetry.

Table of Contents

	Notes from a Southpaw	9
Part 1	A Small Flame on the Horizon
	Vapors of Sidney Bechet	15
	Sitting In on the Set	17
	The Woman in Romare Bearden's Encore	18
	St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church	19
	After 75 Years, Greenwood, Oklahoma, Gets a Statute	21
	A Debt Is Paid	23
	A Bensonhurst Resident Remembers the Death of Yusuf Hawkins	24
	Public Radio Plays Eddie Harris	26
	Three Stories of Cotton	28
	Beggar's Song	29
	Tamara's Dance	31
	Sunshine	32
	Wishbone	33
	The Walkin' Blues	34
	A Woman from the Projects	36
Part 2	Blue Hands
	Cheating Woman Blues Haiku	39
	Jookin'	40
	The Devil Clears His Name of Rumors Surrounding the Death of Robert L. Johnson	41
	The Absence of R.L. Burnside at New York's Autumn Mississippi Blues Festival	45
	"The Jungles Casino,"	46
	The Lifestory of Eddie James "Son" House, Jr. As Told Through His Hands	47
	John Henry Tells Alan Lomax All About the Work Song The Night Before He Races the Steam Drill	48
	Sharecroppers, Ring-Shouters and Stars	52
	A Young Woman's Blues	54
Part 3	Pianoforte
	Undressing for Zora Neale Hurston	59
	The Notes That Fall at the End of Lines	61
	What Does It Mean When a Man Dreams of Lingerie?	62
	Two Drunks With Different Approaches to Life	65
	Silent Partner	67
	J.J. Johnson Changes Tempo	68
	Voodoo	69
	How Does a Man Write a Poem	70
Part 4	Rise
	The Journey of Henry "Box" Brown	73
	Sharecropper's Emancipation	74
	Monochord	75
	Kind of Blue	77
	Would You Like Your Fortune Told?	79
	To My Brothers	81
	The Overcoat	82
	Rise
I.	Field Holler	85
II.	Prison Camp Work Song	86
III.	Chain Gang	86
IV.	Levee Camp Moan	87
V.	Log Rollers	88
VI.	Plow Men	89
VII.	That Old Time Religion	89
VIII.	Blues	90
IX.	Chicago	91
X.	Big Band	92
XI.	Jazz: Take 1	93
XII.	Jazz: Take 2	93
XIII.	Liner Notes	94

Editorial Reviews

"In this wonderfully accomplished collection, Jordan provides welcome relief from so much poetry that is morose or mysteriously ironic in spirit. [His] verse has a grace like that of spirited blues, or gospel music. Rise should put him alongside the recent Cave Canem prizewinners as an African-American poet to watch."  -​Washington Post

"Although Jordan's poems move with musical grace and surety, his imagery is thickly visual and arrestingly tactile, and violence hovers chillingly in the wings. These are poems about racism in America, painful memories and ongoing nightmares . . . But there is benevolence in these finely crafted, subtly formal poems and free-floating faith as Jordan praises the strength and beauty of women and embraces African American history and art with sorrow-dappled pride." -​Booklist

"Van Jordan blows a poem the way Coltrane blows a horn, but a little bluer like Miles all mixed up with Robert L. Johnson, and then the philosophy of Mingus weaving it all together. Yes, I rise and sing. We can't get enough."  -Joy Harjo

"Jordan's poetry is generous and genuine; truth-telling, compelling—and many a spirit is raised by the strength of his confident voice."  -Eleanor Wilner

From the Publisher