MACNOLIA: Poems

by A. Van Jordan

Overview

"Jordan is a wizard at capturing vernacular in both conventional forms and his own invention." —Black Issues Book Review

In 1936, teenager MacNolia Cox became the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition. Supposedly prevented from winning, the precocious child who dreamed of becoming a doctor was changed irrevocably. Her story, told in a poignant nonlinear narrative, illustrates the power of a pivotal moment in a life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393327649
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/17/2005
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry. He has been a finalist for the Rilke Prize and is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. He is the humanities and sciences chair of English literature at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California.

Table of Contents

	Fade In
	"Mercy, Mercy, Mercy"	15
	Z	19
	in-cho-ate	21
	John Montiere answer to question one	22
	The Moment Before He Asks MacNolia Out on a Date	23
	Meeting John Montiere	25
	Rant	26
	from	27
	Wedding Night	29
	Looking for Work	32
	Red Ball Express	34
	In Service	36
	John Montiere answer to question two	38
	Jesse Owens, 1963	39
	Infidelity	41
	When MacNolia Greases My Hair	43
	af-ter-glow	44
	John Montiere answer to question three	45
	with	46
	"One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer"	48
	Elegy to My Son	50
	I'm Trying	52
	Dust	54
	Scenes from My Scrapbook	56
	This Life	58
	The Night Richard Pryor Met Mudbone	60
	Death Letter Blues Ghazal	66
	Unforgettable	68
	A	73
	English	75
	to	80
	Rope	82
	Time Reviews The Ziegfeld Follies Featuring Josephine Baker, 1936	83
	Morena	87
	Asa Philip Randolph	89
	Green Pastures	92
	Practice	93
	Akron Spelling Bee, April 22, 1936	96
	On Stage	100
	MacNolia Backstage with Fats Waller And Bill Robinson at the RKO Palace Theater	104
	My Dream of Charon	108
	Details Torn from MacNolia's Diary	109
	National Spelling Bee Championship Montage	112
	N-e-m-e-s-i-s Blues	118
	In Allan Rohan Crite's School's Out	119
	My One White Friend	120
	Covering the Spelling Bee	121
	Fin	127
	MacNolia's Dream of Shirley Temple
	Fade Out	133
	Acknowledgments