Swallow the Lake

by Clarence Major

Poetry by an African American raised in Chicago.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Currently a professor of twentieth century American literature at the University of California at Davis, Clarence Major is a poet, painter and novelist who was born in Atlanta and grew up in Chicago.
Clarence Major was a finalist for the National Book Awards (1999). He is recipient of many awards, among them, a National Council on The Arts Award (1970), a Fulbright (1981-1983), a Western States Book Award (1986) and two Pushcart prizes--one for poetry, one for fiction. Major is a contributor to many periodicals and anthologies in the USA, Europe, South America and Africa. He has served as judge for The National Book Awards, the PEN-Faulkner Award and twice for the National Endowment for The Arts. Major has traveled extensively and lived in various parts of the United States and for extended periods in France and Italy. He has lectured and read his work in dozens of U. S. universities as well as in England, France, Liberia, West Germany, Ghana, and Italy.

Reviews

[Cedric · Rating 3 out of 5]

whew.

not easy reading, but interesting. think I'd like to get into a later collection and some criticism to see how people who study him frame his work.

The Doll Believers

This lifeless construction,
Yellow hair curled and twisted,
The forever motionless face of rubber,
The dark marked eyebrows.
The flexible pug nose,
Spongy red cheecks,
Camel’s-hair eyebrows,
Moving up and down.
Lifting her up, her eyes fly open,
They stare into space—
An unmoving blueness.
Those never winking, moving balls,
Controlled from the inside,
And that thick rubber body,
The imprint of a navel,
The undersized hands,
The thick soft knees,
The screwed-on head,
The air hole behind her back,
All this in its lifelessness
Gives me a feeling
That children are amazing
To imagine such a thing alive.

It Was

some sense that a whole
generation, & not
for the first time

knows defeat." I
knew even then that it
was whole world

taking place in just
my mind. Sense of
some invalid bullshit.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

HERE

: the petrified forest of the
past, translates a clue to some
innermost jive adventure, or get to
such literal philosophy of the internal rhythm
of how the hazy dry fingers of muted ole
1890 Negroes could diagnose a banjo: or
talk about the mathematics of such captured minds
surviving easy, in rough prisons of self just
outside incense kitchens sweeping out sweetpotato
and mustardgreen spells and odors: or briefly cop
the vernacular of some obscure, but eternal light
leaking thru the autumn dawn of some real forest
not yet created or invested with a purpose