Customer Reviews

Leaving Saturn (The Cave Canem Poetry Prize)

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In the first poem of Major Jackson's collection "Leaving Saturn," Jackson describes the moment when a writer finds his calling. The speaker in the poem "Urban Renewal" describes a long ago summer when he "watched a mother straddle a stoop . . . fingering rows dark as alleys on a young girl's head,' then explains that he "pledged [his] life right then to braiding her lines to mine, to anointing streets I love with all my mind's wit." (3) Even if this isn't a reference to something Major Jackson himself experienced, it is an important clue to Jackson's own impetus to write.

Judging from "Urban Renewal" and many other poems in "Leaving Saturn," Major Jackson's main motivation in writing poetry is love-for his family, for his community and for the details of his world. Later in the poem "Urban Renewal", after describing an urban block party made possible by "woofers stacked to pillars," Jackson asks "what amount of love can express enough gratitude?" (10) Indeed, Jackson's poetry reveals gratitude and deep appreciation for the urban landscape where he blossomed.

Jackson's poetry is peppered heavily with details, some of them beautiful, like "a Baptist preacher stroking the dark underside of God's wet tongue" in "Some Kind of Crazy"(29), some of them ugly, like "a doorway that smelled like piss" in "Blunts" (24) and some of them disturbing, like the seven year old boy whose head was beaten into "a pulp of bad cabbage!" in "Don Pullen at the Zanzibar Blue Jazz Café (44), but all of them interesting. With "Leaving Saturn," Major Jackson has done a notable job of anointing the streets he loves with all of his mind's remarkable wit.

This book is great, Major Jackson really has a way with words. The copy I recieved from psnbooks was shipped to me signed by Major Jackson, which was an awesome surprise!