The Cineaste: Poems

The Cineaste: Poems

by A. Van Jordan
The Cineaste: Poems

The Cineaste: Poems

by A. Van Jordan

eBook

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Overview

“Finds evocative new ways to connect us to a shared storytelling heritage.”—Entertainment Weekly

A. Van Jordan, an acclaimed American poet and the author of three previous volumes, “demonstrates poetry’s power to be at once intimate and wide-ranging” (Robert Pinsky, Washington Post Book World). In this penetrating new work he takes us with him to the movies, where history reverberates and characters are larger than life. The Cineaste is an entrancing montage of poems, wherein film serves as the setting for contemplative trances, memoir, and pure fantasy. At its center is a sonnet sequence that imagines the struggle of pioneer filmmaker Oscar Micheaux against D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which Micheaux saw not only as racist but also as the start of a powerful new art form. “Sharpen the focus in your lens, and you / Sharpen your view of the world; you can see / How people inhabit space in their lives, / How the skin of Negroes and whites both play / With light.” Scenes and characters from films such as Metropolis, Stranger than Paradise, Last Year at Marienbad, The Red Shoes, and The Great Train Robbery also come to luminous life in this vibrant new collection. The Cineaste is an extended riff on Jordan’s life as a moviegoer and a brilliant exploration of film, poetry, race, and the elusiveness of reverie.

from “Last Year at Marienbad”

A place, though visible, is like a ghost
of memories. Even memories one forgets
linger in the space in which they occurred.
Here within the expanse of vaulted ceilings,

doorways leading to more doors, hallways
leading to more halls, the faintest recollections
absorb over time; no act will wholly evanesce.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393240290
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 03/25/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 160
File size: 396 KB

About the Author

A. Van Jordan is the author of five collections of poetry, including?The Cineaste, a finalist for the NAACP Image Award, and M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A, winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and a Lannan Literary Award, among other honors. He is a professor of creative writing at Stanford University and lives in Oakland, California.
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