My Studio: Poems - Softcover

Major, Clarence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807169005 ISBN 13: 9780807169001

Publisher: LSU Press, 2018

Synopsis

Beginning and ending in Clarence Major’s atelier, My Studio demonstrates how art can influence our perception of the world, prompting “all the parts [to] coalesce into a cohesive whole.” With precise and engaging imagery, Major contemplates the spaces we occupy and the “beauty in everyday things” from the familiarity of his studio. “This is more than a room,” he observes. “It’s an unimpeded mental vista.”

Major harnesses both humor and seriousness to investigate a wide range of human experiences. In “A Tragedy Indisputable,” he considers the funeral of a young boy, and the bewilderment and confusion of the crowd, whose “allegiance to logic and reason [is] now in perpetual sway.” In another poem, he paints the picture of a serene day interrupted by “the hammer’s sympathy for the nail, the chatter of ghosts in the bedroom.” In rethinking the relationship between poetry and the world of visual art, Major crafts an intricate and insightful collection, full of passion and inventive language, in which everyday life becomes an opportunity for inward reflection.

About this title

About the Author:

Originally from Atlanta, prize-winning poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Davis. He was a 1999 Bronze Medal National Book Award finalist in poetry and received the 2016 PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award.

Review:

Clarence Major’s My Studio depicts and reveals a state of mind more than a place or studio space. In fact, this wrought collection brings the reader closer to a state of being. Consider how ‘Vantage Point’ encapsulates the speaker’s philosophy regarding art: ‘It’s a peculiar inwardness, / as mysterious as the Baltic Sea is to me. / But I’m utterly free / to be carefree and transfixed.’ The painter and the poet are born to see―blessing and curse―and nature is its own canvas. (Yusef Komunyakaa)

In My Studio, Clarence Major superabundantly models an approach to the ‘answerless void.’ Let the blessed richness and boundaries of one’s imagination and language find form, then let that form which is the poem layer towards a memorable freedom, not mere emancipation. These are poems that avoid decoration and lean heavy into the circumstances and depth of their being. Here, as elsewhere with his paintings, fiction, and poetry, Major honors his inner wealth and sorrows, what Proust described as ‘the intermittences of the heart.’ (Major Jackson)

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0807169005
• ISBN 13: 9780807169001
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 90