What do you think?
Rate this book
Splay Anthem
In a stunning new collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Nathaniel Mackey's "asthmatic song of aspiration" scuttles across cultures and histories―from America to Andalucía, from Ethiopia to Vienna―in a sexy, beautiful adaptive dance. Part antiphonal rant, part rhythmic whisper, Nathaniel Mackey's new collection of poems, Splay Anthem , takes the reader to uncharted poetic spaces. Divided into three sections―"Braid," "Fray," and "Nub" (one referent Mackey notes in his stellar "the imperial, flailing republic of Nub the United States has become, the shrunken place the earth has become, planet Nub")― Splay Anthem weaves together two ongoing serial poems Mackey has been writing for over twenty years, "Song of the Andoumboulou" and "Mu" (though "Mu no more itself / than Andoumboulou").
In the cosmology of the Dogon of West Africa, the Andoumboulou are progenitor spirits, and the song of the Andoumboulou is a song addressed to the spirits, a funeral song, a song of rebirth. " Mu ," too, splays with muni bird, Greek muthos , a Sun Ra tune, a continent once thought to have existed in the Pacific. With the vibrancy of a Mira painting, Mackey's poems trace the lost tribe of "we" through waking and dreamtime, through a multitude of geographies, cultures, histories, and musical traditions, as poetry here serves as the intersection of everything, myth's music, spirit lift.
In the cosmology of the Dogon of West Africa, the Andoumboulou are progenitor spirits, and the song of the Andoumboulou is a song addressed to the spirits, a funeral song, a song of rebirth. " Mu ," too, splays with muni bird, Greek muthos , a Sun Ra tune, a continent once thought to have existed in the Pacific. With the vibrancy of a Mira painting, Mackey's poems trace the lost tribe of "we" through waking and dreamtime, through a multitude of geographies, cultures, histories, and musical traditions, as poetry here serves as the intersection of everything, myth's music, spirit lift.
112 pages, Paperback
First published May 30, 2006
18 people are currently reading
738 people want to read
About the author
Nathaniel Mackey
55 books93 followersPoet 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.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
Read
February 27, 2008A. On the radio program, Cross-Cultural Poetics, Nathaniel Mackey spoke to host Leonard Schwartz about Splay Anthem. Mackey gives his sense of the project by talking about the poems as “a series that’s been in its own way trying to access that consolation of ideas and impulses: music, myth, the word as spoken utterance, as well as inscribed logos, the kind of conjunction of those things that a lot of poets and musicians I’ve been listening to and influenced by were reaching after.” While I’m not always interested in knowing how the thrust of personal engagements enter a series of poems, I do think the stated location of a work is crucial to an understanding of a work of art. As Mackey outlines in his preface to Splay Anthem, it’s the “work-in-progress we continue to be,” that partially speaks to the form of the poems. Drawing on Charles Olson’s rejection of history as “objective ordering,” the poems operate as a weave of historicity, primitive cultures, and language as sound based, as in the language spoken by a variety of jazz musicians (Thelonius Monk, Lester Young, Raphe Malik, Glenn Spearman, Frank Wright, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, etc) who enter and vanish throughout the series of poems.
B. Does music speak a language? Mackey explicitly lays out how the word “Mu,” taken from trumpet player Don Cherry’s late 60’s album by the same title, refers to a “lingual and imaginal effect and affect, myth and mouth in the Greek form muthos…” A couple lines later, Mackey says that “Mu” can also conjure a “lingual and erotic allure.” It’s interesting to note how the word “Mu” functions throughout the whole book, as the poems present “mu” almost as subtitles in numbered parts or cycles. Overall, I’m not sure how “mu” is meant to operate for the reader, but it seems that the musicality the word refers to problemetizes that intersection between sound and sense, where the language of music arrives at the immanent. The etymology of the word “immanent” points to the verbs remain and dwell, which further lead one to lead astray, delay, and continue to be. In many of theses senses, Mackey’s poems work to pull in the gaps of knowing with a fractured narrative that arrives at a serious consideration of music. In the poem “Go Left Out Of Shantiville,” the speaker says “We/heard a music made of swoon, sway.” And then later in the same poem, “Music/the breath we took…It was only/there we wanted to be, the everywhere/we’d always wanted[.]” It is this sense that permeates the poems. However, Mackey’s drawing on music goes well beyond simple influence, as it seems to be ultimately tied with the idea of the cry, as music sings of loss, injustice, etc.
C. The last aspect of Mackey’s poems I wish to draw attention to is his insistent usage of alliteration to create dissonance as emotional effect, much like many of the jazz musicians he calls upon in his preface to Splay Anthem. What Ezra Pound called melopoeia, functions for Mackey as a formal method to achieve that sense of conflict produced by the loss of community, kinship, etc. In the poem “Spectral Escort,” we read the lines “Suppressed/billow, blown bank, burred/voice we owed blowing,/holes cut on hollow/wood…” The repetition of plosive sounds creates a disharmony that is felt on both a textual and visceral level. Many of the poems produce and reproduce this effect in a way that allows the poems to remain expansive and unfettered by the repetition of sounds.
B. Does music speak a language? Mackey explicitly lays out how the word “Mu,” taken from trumpet player Don Cherry’s late 60’s album by the same title, refers to a “lingual and imaginal effect and affect, myth and mouth in the Greek form muthos…” A couple lines later, Mackey says that “Mu” can also conjure a “lingual and erotic allure.” It’s interesting to note how the word “Mu” functions throughout the whole book, as the poems present “mu” almost as subtitles in numbered parts or cycles. Overall, I’m not sure how “mu” is meant to operate for the reader, but it seems that the musicality the word refers to problemetizes that intersection between sound and sense, where the language of music arrives at the immanent. The etymology of the word “immanent” points to the verbs remain and dwell, which further lead one to lead astray, delay, and continue to be. In many of theses senses, Mackey’s poems work to pull in the gaps of knowing with a fractured narrative that arrives at a serious consideration of music. In the poem “Go Left Out Of Shantiville,” the speaker says “We/heard a music made of swoon, sway.” And then later in the same poem, “Music/the breath we took…It was only/there we wanted to be, the everywhere/we’d always wanted[.]” It is this sense that permeates the poems. However, Mackey’s drawing on music goes well beyond simple influence, as it seems to be ultimately tied with the idea of the cry, as music sings of loss, injustice, etc.
C. The last aspect of Mackey’s poems I wish to draw attention to is his insistent usage of alliteration to create dissonance as emotional effect, much like many of the jazz musicians he calls upon in his preface to Splay Anthem. What Ezra Pound called melopoeia, functions for Mackey as a formal method to achieve that sense of conflict produced by the loss of community, kinship, etc. In the poem “Spectral Escort,” we read the lines “Suppressed/billow, blown bank, burred/voice we owed blowing,/holes cut on hollow/wood…” The repetition of plosive sounds creates a disharmony that is felt on both a textual and visceral level. Many of the poems produce and reproduce this effect in a way that allows the poems to remain expansive and unfettered by the repetition of sounds.
May 3, 2011
Perhaps one of the most exciting experiences reading I have had in quite some time was not with any form of poetry but rather a brief explanation of some of it. In Splay Anthem, Nathaniel Mackey at last gives some form of exploration to his ongoing project of writing “Songs of Andoumboulou,” finally explaining their origins in that they originate with the “cosmology of the Dogon,” allegedly inspired by the intuitive them of “underness” of the track “Song of the Andoumboulou” on Les Dogon. After listening to the track myself, I think that perhaps to clarify what he means by “underness” it may mean silence. The track itself seems to mix between almost a funk-like rhythm and jazz adding unpredictability to the quiet yet rhythmic chanting of voice and drums. In Splay’s first section Braid, the mixing of music and spoken word that Mackey, has in some circles perhaps become known for becomes more apparent, in the first work Andoumboulouous Brush:
spoke. Sprung bone
the
obtuse flute he’d
long wanted, blew
across the end of it.
Throughout these beginning poems of Splay Anthem, Mackey uses the term Mu, as a subtitle, or point of reference for “both its lingual and erotic allure…for it is not only noun byt verb and muse likewise”. Music is also further present in these poems simply in the very rhythm and structure Mackey uses with some of them so emphasizing certain sounds and rhythm as :
As in Wrack Tavern they read
by ledge light, tilted back on their
barstools, teetering, barely made
out what they saw…Talked muse….
As well as in the Song of the Andoumboulou 40
Asked his name, he said
Stra, short for stranger
sang it. semisaid, semisung.
stronjer I asked, semisang,
half in jest. “Stronger”
Not only did Splay Anthem earn Mackey a National Book Award but I also found it to be the work which most interested me in his work as a whole. The flow, meter and rhythm of the words vary page by page, with each page emphasizing different sounds and seemingly begging to be spoken aloud, not necessarily simply read.
spoke. Sprung bone
the
obtuse flute he’d
long wanted, blew
across the end of it.
Throughout these beginning poems of Splay Anthem, Mackey uses the term Mu, as a subtitle, or point of reference for “both its lingual and erotic allure…for it is not only noun byt verb and muse likewise”. Music is also further present in these poems simply in the very rhythm and structure Mackey uses with some of them so emphasizing certain sounds and rhythm as :
As in Wrack Tavern they read
by ledge light, tilted back on their
barstools, teetering, barely made
out what they saw…Talked muse….
As well as in the Song of the Andoumboulou 40
Asked his name, he said
Stra, short for stranger
sang it. semisaid, semisung.
stronjer I asked, semisang,
half in jest. “Stronger”
Not only did Splay Anthem earn Mackey a National Book Award but I also found it to be the work which most interested me in his work as a whole. The flow, meter and rhythm of the words vary page by page, with each page emphasizing different sounds and seemingly begging to be spoken aloud, not necessarily simply read.
December 20, 2008
This is such a wonderful series--rhythmically infectious. I especially admire it as a writer whose poems are more individual than this. The overall structure, movement and approach of the book is stunning. The tension arises in the space between deciphering place/person/situation in each poem (as some of the speakers in each poem are attempting to do as well) and getting swept along by the beat of line.
My only somewhat minor complaint is that around section III, "Nub," I felt a bit impatient. I kept thinking, ok, so Mackey's proven he's awesome at poems like this, I'd like to see what else he can do... this probably has a lot to do with my attention span, and not so much to do with the book. I haven't read anything else by Mackey, but I actually do want to see what else he can do, so perhaps I will.
If you read this, you MUST read at least several poems out loud! Otherwise, it's like just looking at sheet music without playing.
My only somewhat minor complaint is that around section III, "Nub," I felt a bit impatient. I kept thinking, ok, so Mackey's proven he's awesome at poems like this, I'd like to see what else he can do... this probably has a lot to do with my attention span, and not so much to do with the book. I haven't read anything else by Mackey, but I actually do want to see what else he can do, so perhaps I will.
If you read this, you MUST read at least several poems out loud! Otherwise, it's like just looking at sheet music without playing.
Read
February 17, 2015This is too extraordinary to write about, synthesizing so many strains of world thought--Dogon, jazz, music, Greek mythology, life, America. I'm rushing out to read the two earlier volumes. It's a work of genius.
July 14, 2022
I was blown away by the blend of jazz rhythms, epic diasporic lyricism, disjointed rhymes, and dreamy poetics employed across this volume. At least, that's how the first half of the text impacted me. Unfortunately, the second half, which seems to grow from a much more contemporary context, lost me. Mackey's play with various sorts of echoes became a repetitive slog, and hard to finish. Still, this collection as a whole is a strong recommendation, reminding me of equal parts Jean Toomer and Fred Moten. While a second reading of Cane revealed its flaws, the imperfection added something to the effort, and perhaps that holds true here as well. Fans of Moten's Feel Trio (or the Billy Woods/Earl Sweatshirt sphere of hip hop) will find much to chew on here.
July 8, 2011
Best poetry I have read in a long time. Mackey writes poetry like I always wanted to, using sound to control the momentum and flow rather than signification. Alliteration, consonance, and slant rhymes abound and often overflow, making certain passages difficult to stomach ("Web it was we were." being a fairly typical sentence). What's more, Mackey indulges in some high tech vocabulary, employing words like "exegete" to "vatic" regularly. For me, it's not an issue, since I love learning new words and pay attention to sonics primarily, but it might annoy some readers.
The only weaknesses in this collection were the repeated appearances of the word "andoumboulouou(s)", which sounds silly, and the boring consistency of the form. It's not that the form isn't unique, it is, but Mackey does not stray from his short lines, periodic right aligned widows, half-used pages, and typical stanza lengths. If he had mixed in some prose poetry or lines of outlier length, the book would be a more exciting read.
The only weaknesses in this collection were the repeated appearances of the word "andoumboulouou(s)", which sounds silly, and the boring consistency of the form. It's not that the form isn't unique, it is, but Mackey does not stray from his short lines, periodic right aligned widows, half-used pages, and typical stanza lengths. If he had mixed in some prose poetry or lines of outlier length, the book would be a more exciting read.
May 18, 2010
Mackey is a master. His foreword or explanation of his work just blows me away. He uses foreing gods to portray dreams and more dreams...awesome book.
October 7, 2014
This is one short series of poems I found hard to resist and put down.
April 1, 2008
Nathaniel Mackey, Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006)
There is a (very) short list of poets I keep in the back of my head whom I believe every “performance” poet, “slam” poet, and “spoken word artist” should read-- those poets whose work is offered in the same performance-oriented vein, but still works first and foremost as poetry. I have added Nathaniel Mackey to the list, for Splay Anthem is the epitome of this style of writing-- it sounds great when you read it aloud, and stands up when you read it on the page. Mackey has not forgotten that poetry is, first and foremost, about the sound (where so many of these others are so concerned with the message they're trying to get across that I often wonder if whether it sounds good ever enters their heads), and man, it sounds good:
"Vibrating string held us together,/hostage, nubs what before were/fingers albeit we plucked at it/even so, a subdued drum pounding/past/words, words' amanuensis...Packed up,/departed, booked... 'Cold water/and dirt,' a voice we heard sang,/wasted.”
(“Song of the Andomboulou: 44”)
This is great stuff, made all the more interesting by Mackey's erudite (and quite illuminating) introduction, which traces, in an impressionist kinda way, a string of influences that led to the poems we have here. All the messages that the performance poets are so hot to make sure we humans understand are in this book, but-- and this is the important part, kiddies-- they never get in the way of the poetry itself. And that's what makes this such a fine piece of work. Should be required reading for aspiring poets with messages, and highly recommended for everyone else, too. ****
There is a (very) short list of poets I keep in the back of my head whom I believe every “performance” poet, “slam” poet, and “spoken word artist” should read-- those poets whose work is offered in the same performance-oriented vein, but still works first and foremost as poetry. I have added Nathaniel Mackey to the list, for Splay Anthem is the epitome of this style of writing-- it sounds great when you read it aloud, and stands up when you read it on the page. Mackey has not forgotten that poetry is, first and foremost, about the sound (where so many of these others are so concerned with the message they're trying to get across that I often wonder if whether it sounds good ever enters their heads), and man, it sounds good:
"Vibrating string held us together,/hostage, nubs what before were/fingers albeit we plucked at it/even so, a subdued drum pounding/past/words, words' amanuensis...Packed up,/departed, booked... 'Cold water/and dirt,' a voice we heard sang,/wasted.”
(“Song of the Andomboulou: 44”)
This is great stuff, made all the more interesting by Mackey's erudite (and quite illuminating) introduction, which traces, in an impressionist kinda way, a string of influences that led to the poems we have here. All the messages that the performance poets are so hot to make sure we humans understand are in this book, but-- and this is the important part, kiddies-- they never get in the way of the poetry itself. And that's what makes this such a fine piece of work. Should be required reading for aspiring poets with messages, and highly recommended for everyone else, too. ****
August 19, 2008
For me, to compare this to Notley's Descent of Alette is the highest compliment. The comparison mainly comes from the fantasy landscape where the poem takes place. But where it felt Notley was purely into myth, Mackey places his myth inside a song, and then places his reader inside that song. The cadences and rhythms are usually tight but fluid and pleasurably tangled.
April 20, 2010
Poetry, unless it's horrible gets five stars. I put the book down; honestly don't even know where it is. The rhythms are there, unending, that sort of abrupt stutter-step enabled by line autonomy and assonance.
File under: The poetry of process, to be cont.
File under: The poetry of process, to be cont.
September 19, 2015
"In a stunning new collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Nathaniel Mackey's "asthmatic song of aspiration" scuttles across cultures and historiesfrom America to Andalucia, from Ethiopia to Viennain a sexy, beautiful adaptive dance."
November 25, 2018
If you love art, mid-century Disney movies and culture, and strong, creative women who push through barriers, you'll like this book!
June 3, 2019
Just read the book now and stop reading reviews (then come back here if you want).
Mackey is a wordsmith and a creative wizard who simultaneously paints a story subtly incorporates on political thought, offers hope for a new reality and gives us a sonic musicality in his poetry. He is able to keep the careful attention to sonic detail in words that you might find in objectivist works (assonance, alliteration, rhyme consonance etc.) while maintaining a coherent, esoteric narrative and beautifully pensive, nearly surrealist visuals.
This is poetry well done and open-ended enough for anyone to benefit from whether drawing writing inspiration or just to enjoy as a reader.
Mackey is a wordsmith and a creative wizard who simultaneously paints a story subtly incorporates on political thought, offers hope for a new reality and gives us a sonic musicality in his poetry. He is able to keep the careful attention to sonic detail in words that you might find in objectivist works (assonance, alliteration, rhyme consonance etc.) while maintaining a coherent, esoteric narrative and beautifully pensive, nearly surrealist visuals.
This is poetry well done and open-ended enough for anyone to benefit from whether drawing writing inspiration or just to enjoy as a reader.
July 18, 2025
Mythical afrosurrealist allegory.Fugitive fleeing and a non existent line between dreaming and waking. His rooting the bodies (narrator and Anuncia) in a material (?) world through sex and the erotic is almost the most fascinating aspect of mackeys writing. Sound transmutes spatial possibility. Quite a challenging book that has one liners that I’ll return to forever.
April 27, 2022
Unsurprisingly getting thrown in at what is part appx 20 of an ongoing poem doesn’t really help you get a feel for Mackey’s work overall, so I’m not going to judge it on that front. (The intro also didn’t really help and was dense in a way I haven’t seen since college.) The individual poems are lyrically gorgeous, and I definitely want to try again with Mackey, maybe just towards the start of these ongoing poems, or if he’s got a standalone volume somewhere in his oeuvre.
August 18, 2023
This felt like a small piece of a much larger poetic work, which apparently it is. Really liked the second part but you know I'm a sucker for an orphic fragment.
September 30, 2024
sonic and jazzy and explosive stuff here, but i kept losing my focus in the tiny crevices
March 23, 2022
This poem is exceptionally interesting to read about and not terribly interesting to read.
Mackey's premise (and forward) is ripe for exploration, and the way he refashions historical and musical detritus into something meaningful is beautiful. There's a fun looseness to all of it, and the reader is consistently placed in the tension between mourning and celebration.
That said, it's an ongoing poem, so the lack of a clear center means it's not very accessible, and readers' mileage will vary depending on whether or not they think a single serial poem can sustain itself for decades.
I lean towards no.
"Splay Anthem" as a project is unforgettable;
"Splay Anthem" as a poem retreats into the formlessness it emerges from, and maybe that's the point.
Mackey's premise (and forward) is ripe for exploration, and the way he refashions historical and musical detritus into something meaningful is beautiful. There's a fun looseness to all of it, and the reader is consistently placed in the tension between mourning and celebration.
That said, it's an ongoing poem, so the lack of a clear center means it's not very accessible, and readers' mileage will vary depending on whether or not they think a single serial poem can sustain itself for decades.
I lean towards no.
"Splay Anthem" as a project is unforgettable;
"Splay Anthem" as a poem retreats into the formlessness it emerges from, and maybe that's the point.
Read
May 30, 2014i love the inconclusiveness of this book. i love mackey's rhythm. i love how he arranges the words on the page. i love how this theme of inconclusiveness permeates both the form and content of the book. mackey's home is a verb.
August 18, 2020
I have lost track of how many times I have read this book. Partly because of curiosity and the prospect of understanding more of the poetry and partly because of its sheer brilliance and strong invitations to revisit. Here's a good experience - put on "Thembi" by Pharaoh Sanders and read this book.
October 1, 2008
sound, play, and gnosticism.
March 9, 2009
Finding it difficult to their Mackey's voice in this one.
December 18, 2013
"It wasn't signs/we were after, we sought what signs/replaced, pitiless wish to be all/there, that it all be there. . ."
October 24, 2014
My brain was having none of this.
Want to read
March 6, 2008what i learned is that i'm not ready to read this just yet.
June 11, 2008
This is the straight dope if you like poetry that swings like music...
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews