Blue Fasa

by Nathaniel Mackey

A stellar new collection of poems by “the Balanchine of the architecture dance” (The New York Times), and winner of the National Book Award in poetry.

Nathaniel Mackey’s sixth collection of poems, Blue Fasa, continues what the New Yorker has described as the “mythological conception” and “descriptive daring” of his two intertwined serial poems—where, however, “no prior knowledge is required” for readers new to this poet’s visionary work. This collection takes its title from two related black musical traditions, a West African griot epic as told by the Fasa, a clan in ancient Ghana, and trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s hard bop classic “Blue Bossa,” influenced by the emergence of Brazilian bossa nova. In two sections Blue Fasa opens with the catch of the heart and the call of romance, as it follows a band of travelers, refugees from history, on their incessant migrations through time, place, and polity, toward renewal.

Genres: Poetry, American, 21st Century, African American Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 5, 2015

About the author

Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a BA degree from Princeton University and a PhD from Stanford University.

Nathaniel Mackey has received numerous awards including a Whiting Writer’s Award and a 2010 Guggenheim fellowship. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of English at Duke University and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. Mackey currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Reviews

[Amelea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read a description of Mackey's poems in Blue Fasa as a near-spiritual exercise of displacement, and found myself exploring a book no less worthy of that dramatic description. Nate Mackey is a master of poetic sound, "jazztext" and controlled phonetic non-sense. I was introduced to this book through a multimedia poetries class, and with the advice of a professor, read most of the collection aloud. As someone who has a lot of difficulty reading long poems, I found myself surprised at how much I enjoyed Mackey's poems in this collection, which—although divided into sections—were clearly assembled cohesively as one long poetic journey. The organization of Blue Fasa was as unpredictable as jazz, and in its various poem-lengths, the table of contents almost felt like songs on an album. Heavy with the volume of stories, definitions, and allusions, thick with music, Mackey's poem challenged what I believe was possible for poetry—or at least, for the words in poetry—to achieve. The words strayed from what I knew in definition and sound, and reading the poems aloud showed me how sound did not just supplement meaning, but often created it. It was clear that Mackey put years of work into the collection, as each poem had its own vocabulary, rhythm, music, voice, and world. Through train tracks in places that the speaker took trusting readers to, nonsense/sensible rhythms, characters that came in and out of our perception, I found myself trusting Mackey's guidance, as if listening to a music piece and trusting that it would take me on a worthwhile aural journey. Although often unsure of where the poems were going (location wise and meaning wise), I found myself looped into similar patterns of sound and story, and the coherence of the poems rested not in a traditional understanding of how we gathered meaning (through word/concept association), but rather, pushed our ability to gather meaning from the rhythm of words and all that they are able to convey.

I'll definitely be reading this collection again because if anything, my review above showed that I was not done understanding the collection. I had an incredible experience reading the poems, but felt like I needed to go back and re-listen, re-read, and learn from Mackey where exactly sound can take me, and how jazztext can displace us from conventional modes of writing/reading in helpful ways.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A journey in and through dispossession, of generous love in and through dispossession, of love's lack and love's bounty. "At no point on any map, at all points on every map." One thing Blue Fasa was for me, among others: the most beautiful song, an interweaving of the narrows and gapes marking the gulf between (the love and fallenness which animates) my/our seemingly unshakable yearning for the horizon ("second body inside my first head
it seemed") and (the love and fallenness which animates) my/our desire to celebrate the ecstatic present, a gulf which is nonetheless bridged easily (by the love and fallenness with)in those moments of lingering together "in the gathering afternoon." Ode to falling together. "love's own distant
lover."

[Muthee BM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for long poems and Mackey's long poem/ long song pulls us along through a journey of discrepancy (creaks and cracks) into a state of music and rythm that feels like a good warm hug. Braiding together "The Song of Andoumboulou"and "mu", Mackey adroitly handles themes, places, metaphysics (shout out to the philosophical posse).

[Will McGee]

Nathaniel Mackey's lengthy epic poem continues with Blue Fasa, a narrative that intertwines two poems at once, Song of the Andoumboulou and Mu, which follow a group of travelers on a journey around the earth and through language and metaphysics. I don't read very much poetry, and this collection in particular is not exactly easy to read, so I've chosen not to rate this because I'm not confident in my own ability to fairly assess what I've just read. What I can say, though, is that Mackey's exploration of language was consistently thought-provoking and unlike anything I've read before. There are many references to jazz, often referencing specific albums or musicians, and as much as I love jazz, I had a hard time figuring out the relevance of these names and albums to the story beyond name-dropping. Other than jazz, the main themes of this poem seem centered around constant change and exploration, including exploration of the human body and sexuality.
I would like to revisit this book at some point when I have a stronger context for what's happening, but I did enjoy it the first time.

[Laurel Perez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This epic poem, that entertained two lengthy poems is a metaphysical dream full off imagry, sound and word play, and white space to allow time to digest. Technically speaking, this is a work of art, Mackey takes some serious risks, but I think that in the end they pay off.

[Dan Wilcox]

Need to keep at this -- say what? -- the continuing saga of the mu & the Andoumboulou -- glad to have the internet in my room -- reminds me of when I first read the early Maximus poems -- our new American epic

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M1572b 2015

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars