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Summary
Summary
2015 PEN Open Book Award Finalist
Angela Jackson's latest collection of poetry borrows its title from a lyric in Barbara Lewis's 1963 hit single "Hello Stranger," recorded at Chess Records in Chicago. Like the song, Jackson's poems are a melodic ode to the African American experience, informed by both individual lives and community history, from the arrival of the first African slave in Virginia in 1619 to post-Obama America.
It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time reflects the maturity of Jackson's poetic vision. The Great Migration, the American South, and Chicago all serve as signposts, but it is the complexity of individual lives--both her own and those who have gone before, walk beside, and come after--that invigorate this collection. Upon surveying so vast a landscape, Jackson finds that sorrow meets delight, and joy lifts up anger and despair. And for all this time, love is the agent, the wise and just rule and guide.
Author Notes
Angela Jackson's previous collections of poetry include Voo Doo/Love Magic (1974); Dark Legs and Silk Kisses (TriQuarteriy, 1993), which won the Carl Sandburg Award; and And All These Roads Be Luminous (TriQuarteriy, 1998). Her novel Where J Must Go (TriQuarteriy, 2009) won the American Book Award. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, JriQuarterly's Daniel Curley Award, the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. She lives in Chicago.
Reviews (2)
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Songwriter and singer Barbara Lewis' alluringly haunting 1963 hit, Hello Stranger, is the source of the evocative title of Jackson's first poetry collection since All These Roads Be Luminous (1998) and follows her American Book Award-winning novel, Where I Must Go (2009). That homage is one of many (Gwendolyn Brooks, Ida B. Wells, Aretha Franklin) that form the lyric connectivity of Jackson's involving poems, which flow from and back into the mighty river of African American history and culture. Born in Mississippi and raised there and in Chicago, Jackson brings both homes on the road of the Great Migration to emotional, sensuous, and social life with finesse and intensity. She portrays family members with tender radiance and uses poetic form and narrative drive with particularly cunning intent as she addresses racial violence past and present. A strong current of spiritual questioning runs throughout this resonant collection, most strikingly in The Red Line Is the Soul Train, in which Jackson turns a Chicago mass-transit route into a vehicle for profound inquiry. Life gathers meaning as you live it, writes Jackson, the credo for this reflective and singing book of memories, insight, protest, and wonder.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
From the earliest slaves to the Great Migration to contemporary violence ("They make a noose/ For the moon. .Be careful, Black boy," from a poem dedicated to Trayvon Martin), this work by National Book Award finalist Jackson offers the epic sweep of African American history. Personal moments-a mother's "blue print" for her daughter, a father's love "so fierce and tender"-are stitched into the fabric, but the overwhelming sense is of community, of "old men and women who pinned a piece/ of their hopes on me." © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Acknowledgments | p. xiii |
| Mississippi Summer | p. 3 |
| I The Fabric of Our Lives | p. 7 |
| Crowning | p. 8 |
| Perfect Pears | p. 9 |
| My Father's Prayers | p. 11 |
| Territory | p. 12 |
| Hope | p. 14 |
| Mama in Blue, White, and Love | p. 15 |
| In My Father's House Are Many Stories | p. 17 |
| II Elam House | p. 23 |
| The Day after All Saints Day Is All Souls Day | p. 25 |
| Her Memory Coming Home | p. 26 |
| Photograph: Circa 1960 | p. 28 |
| A Thousand Pages | p. 29 |
| Pendulum | p. 31 |
| Phillis | p. 33 |
| After Work | p. 35 |
| Vocabulary | p. 37 |
| III The Red Line Is the Soul Train | p. 41 |
| Notes above the Stream, a Part of the Stream | p. 45 |
| A Woman Was Being Raped | p. 47 |
| Eclipse | p. 48 |
| IV Suite: Ida | |
| Ida Watches | p. 51 |
| Two Trains | p. 52 |
| Did Ida B. Wells Ever Pass Bessie Smith on the Boulevard? | p. 53 |
| Kokomo | p. 54 |
| V Looking Back | p. 59 |
| Betrayal | p. 60 |
| Hot Pink Flamingoes | p. 61 |
| Fuchsia | p. 63 |
| The Scarf | p. 64 |
| The Rape of Memory | p. 66 |
| Sleep | p. 68 |
| VI American Justice | p. 73 |
| In These Times | p. 75 |
| Warm Weather | p. 76 |
| Beginner's Luck | p. 77 |
| Nocturnal | p. 81 |
| Niger: No Exit | p. 82 |
| VII The Last Door | p. 87 |
| Glory Land | p. 89 |
| Haiti, It Has Been Thirty Years Since I Last Saw You | p. 97 |
| The Moment of Arrival | p. 99 |
| VIII The Smoke Queen | p. 103 |
| The Good Neighbor Observes the Celebrity Next Door | p. 107 |
| You Do Not Know the Hour | p. 109 |
| Heaven Is No Recompense | p. 110 |
| For Gwen, On Her Passing | p. 111 |
| The Poem in the Pocket | p. 113 |
| Faith II | p. 115 |
| An African Reunion | p. 116 |
| The Ritual Calendar of Yes | p. 118 |
| Leaf | p. 120 |
| April 6, 1991 | p. 123 |
