Nathaniel Mackey

Nathaniel Mackey Poems

— "mu" fifth part —

His they their
we, their he
his was but if
...

-ring of the well-


Fray was the name where we came
to next. Might've been a place,
...

Next a Brazilian cut came
on Sophia picked. Paulinho's
voice lit our way for what
seemed eternity,
...

The vote came in early. We ignored
it. No ballout-box auction for us...
Nub's uninstructed dance's bare
feet, music we took them for.
...

— "mu" one hundred eighteenth part —


Heaved our bags and headed out again. Again
the ground that was to've been there wasn't.
...

—"mu" forty-eighth part—

"While we're alive," we kept
repeating. Tongues, throats,
roofs of our mouths bone dry,
...

—"mu" twentieth part—

The way we lay
we mimed a body
of water. It was
...

—"mu" sixty-first part—


Gray morning, blue morning, a
feather blown between. Mashed
...

—"mu" twenty-eighth part—

On Antiphon Island they lowered
the bar and we bent back. It
wasn't limbo we were in albeit
...

A comped piano lifted the leaves in
Low Forest, a blanket of shade pulled
up, a sheet of glass put in place, free
pros-
...

—orphic fragment—

Carnival morning they
were Greeks in Brazil,
Africans in Greek
...

Came now to another crossroads.
Stick people stood awaiting us, to
the left, straight ahead, to the right.
What was that song you sang,
...

— "mu" one hundred sixteenth part —


Again that closer walk, legless though
they'd be. Low Insofarian sun I cut my
...

Decapitism stuck to the end of my
tongue. What to do but call it names
I thought. It wasn't thought I was
think-
...

—"mu" ninety-eighth part—


Remembered moment lamenting
its exit, the anaphylactic aria
fell away. What beauty promised or
...

Nathaniel Mackey Biography

Nathaniel Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic and editor. He is Professor of English at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teaching a poetry workshop at Duke University. He has been editor and publisher of Hambone since 1982 and he won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006. In 2014, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Biography Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He obtained his B.A. from Princeton University and his PhD from Stanford University. He taught and lived in Santa Cruz from 1979 to 2010. He is currently a professor at Duke University. Poetry Mackey's books of poetry include Four for Trane (1978); Septet for the End of Time (1983); Eroding Witness (1985), which was selected for the National Poetry Series; Outlandish (1992); School of Udhra (1993); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); Whatsaid Serif (1998); Splay Anthem (2006) and a chapbook Outer Pradesh (2014). Mackey's poetry combines African mythology, African-American musical traditions, and Modernist poetic experiment. His several ongoing serial projects explore the relationship of poetry and historical memory, as well as the ritual power of poetry and song. Fiction Mackey has published four volumes of an ongoing prose project entitled, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate: Bass Cathedral (2008), Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993) and Bedouin Hornbook (1986). Criticism and editing Mackey is the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing (1993), an influential book of literary theory, and more recently of Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (2004). He has edited the avant-garde literary journal Hambone for more than 15 years, and co-edited Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose with Art Lange(1993).)

The Best Poem Of Nathaniel Mackey

Irritable Mystic

— "mu" fifth part —

His they their
we, their he
his was but if
need be one,
self-
extinguishing
I, neither sham nor
excuse yet an
alibi, exited,
out,
else
the only where
he'd be.

Before
the long since
remaindered
body, imagines
each crack, each
crevice as it sweats
under cloth,
numbed
inarticulate
tongues touching
down on love's endlessly
warmed-over thigh.
The awaited one
she mistook him for haunts
him, tells him in
dreams he told
him so.
Such offense,
but at what
won't say,
moot
remonstrance,
no resolve if not
not to be caught
out. . .

Abstract advance, its
advantage unproved,
unbelieved-in,
vain
what wish would
give. . .
Late eighties
night
momentarily bleached by
bomblight. Awoke,
maybe inwardly wanted
it,
wrestling with dreams
of the
awaited one again.
Thought
back but a moment later
what moodier start
to have gotten off
to,
angered by that but
begrudged it its impact
and
so sits remembering,
pretending, shrugs it
off. . .

Arced harp. Dark
bent-over body. Esoteric
sun whose boat its
back
upheld. . .
Unseizably
vast underbelly of
light,
limb-letting thrust.
Tread of
hoofs. Weighted udders of
dust. . .
His it their she
once they awake,
the
arisen one,
world
at her feet,
her feet
one with their
rapture,
ankledeep in damage
though she
dances. . .
The slippings off
of her
of their hands define
her hips, whose are
the suns whose
heat
his nights taste
of
and as at last he
lies her legs loom,
naked,
loose gown pulled from
her, sleep
turns.
And he with his
postures
cramps the air,
bent
lotuslike, lips
part kiss,
part
pout

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