Inspired by Albert Camus's seminal Myth of Sisyphus, Major Jackson's fifth volume subtly configures the poet as "absurd hero" and plunges headfirst into a search for stable ground in an unstable world. We follow Jackson's restless, vulnerable speaker as he ponders creation in the face of meaninglessness, chronicles an increasingly technological world and the difficulty of social and political unity, probes a failed marriage, and grieves his lost mother with a stunning, lucid lyricism.

The arc of a man emerges; he bravely confronts his past, including his betrayals and his mistakes, and questions who he is as a father, as a husband, as a son, and as a poet. With intense musicality and verve, The Absurd Man also faces outward, finding refuge in intellectual and sensuous passions. At once melancholic and jubilant, Jackson considers the journey of humanity, with all its foibles, as a sacred pattern of discovery reconciled by art and the imagination.

Author: Major Jackson
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 02/25/2020
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 8.60h x 6.30w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9781324004554


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 12/16/2019
Library Journal 01/01/2020 pg. 77

About the Author
Jackson, Major: - Major Jackson is the author of five volumes of poems, including Roll Deep and Leaving Saturn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review, Jackson lives in South Burlington, Vermont.