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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 ghostof memories. Even memories one forgetslinger in the space in which they occurred.Here within the expanse of vaulted ceilings,doorways leading to more doors, hallwaysleading to more halls, the faintest recollectionsabsorb over time; no act will wholly evanesce.
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.
Summary
“Finds evocative new ways to connect us to a shared storytelling heritage.”—Entertainment Weekly
