Beat Beyond

Major Jackson is Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing, and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.Amor Kohli is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies at DePaul University.

• On Poetry: My Lyrical Self My Lyrical Self Radios Convergences and Confluences The Necessity of Language as Freedom A Mystifying Silence: Big and Black Ancient Enmity Best American Poetry 2019The Dadaab Suite: An Introduction On Poets: Tales of the HeroicThe Historical Poem Tales of the Heroic Hayden Collected Poems Countee Cullen and the Racial Mountain Wallace Stevens After “Lunch” Making is the Mirror Listen Children Assuming the Mask: On Ai’s Poetry Anatomy of a Pulitzer Prize letter Stomping with Garrett Delight, Exactitude, and a FaithFlash Reviews On Entryways: A Beat BeyondInfluence of the Non-Literary VarietyDo You Want More??!!? Watts Prophets Living Legends Black Poetry: A Beat Beyond

For teachers, it's a unit-worthy syllabus of poets whose work intersects and mutually inspires throughout the last century, with discussion questions to boot. For scholars, it's thoughtful research on poets like Countee Cullen and Lucille Clifton, a sharp-eyed breakdown of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry award letter that made Gwendolyn Brooks the first Black woman recipient, and a short, persuasive thesis on the historical poem as a defining national genre. . . For critics, of course, it's a giddy chance to catch a younger Jackson at our own task, writing low-key ekphrastics as he turns his metronome ear and poet's tongue on someone else's art.