The big Book of Exit Strategies

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Nonfiction / Literary Arts / Plays & Poetry / May, Jamaal
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Literary Arts / Plays & Poetry / May, Jamaal	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Literary Arts / Plays & Poetry / May, Jamaal	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"Praise for Jamaal May: "Linguistically acrobatic [and] beautifully crafted. [Jamaal May's] poems, exquisitely balanced by a sharp intelligence mixed with earnestness, makes his debut a marvel."--Publishers Weekly -- Following May's award-winning debut collection, Hum (2013), these new poems explore parallel landscapes of the poet's interior and an insidious American condition. Using dark humor that helps illuminate the pains of maturity and loss of imagination, May uncovers language like a skilled architect-digging up bones of the past to expose what lies beneath the surface of the fragile human condition. From: "Ask Where I've Been":Ask about the tornado of fists. The blows landed. If you can watch it all-the spit and blood frozen against snow, you can probably tell I am the too-narrow road winding out of a crooked city built of laughter, abandon, feathers and drums. Ask only if you can watch streetlights bow, bridges arc, and power lines sag, and still believe what matters most is not where I bend but where I am growing. Jamaal May is a poet, editor, and filmmaker from Detroit, Michigan, where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. His poetry won the 2013 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and appears in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, the Believer, NER, and the Kenyon Review. May has earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College as well as fellowships from Cave Canem and The Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. He founded the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook Press."-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Intense and enjoyable submitted by lexinylander on July 24, 2018, 9:49pm I liked Jamaal May's writing style a whole whole lot. My favorites were FBI Questioning During the 2009 Presidential Inaguration, especially the first stanza, and Conducting Ivy with the Girl Down the Street and The Unseen Hand of Zombie Jesus. I also greatly enjoyed the two poems that were for Tarfia.

"And when she says drums I break into a broken little beatbox but she covers my mouth / kisses the back of her hand and beings to articulate the green that just keeps rising out of us."

"My friend, I write because I love you enough to ask for what is terrible: run farther than your feet can possibly carry your heart. I love you enough to confess that you will fail but fail closer to the finish line than if you lie down before the start gun fires."