Paracritical Hinge
Essay, Talks, Notes, Interviews
by Nathaniel Mackey
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Pub Date Feb 15 2018 | Archive Date Feb 15 2018
University of Iowa Press | Contemporary North American Poetry Series
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Description
Paracritical Hinge is a collection of varied yet interrelated pieces highlighting Nathaniel Mackey’s multifaceted work as writer and critic. It embraces topics ranging from Walt Whitman’s interest in phrenology to the marginalization of African American experimental writing; from Kamau Brathwaite’s “calibanistic” language practices to Federico García Lorca’s flamenco aesthetic of duende and its continuing repercussions; from H. D.’s desert measure and coastal way of knowing to the altered spatial disposition of Miles Davis’s trumpet sound; from Robert Duncan’s serial poetics to diasporic syncretism; from the lyric poem’s present-day predicaments to gnosticism. Offering illuminating commentary on these and other artists including Amiri Baraka, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Wilson Harris, Jack Spicer, John Coltrane, Jay Wright, and Bob Kaufman, Paracritical Hinge also sheds light on Mackey’s own work as a poet, fiction writer, and editor.
Advance Praise
“Mackey’s new volume is more even than the ‘paracriticism’ of its title; it is a hinge linking practices, linking a poetic critique with a metamusical aesthetic. Fiction and criticism conjoin in the passages drawing from Mackey’s serial fiction even as the interviews proffer a poetics.”—Aldon Nielsen, Penn State University
“Mackey’s voice emanates from the perspective available to a contemporary African American, jazz influenced, on-the-postmodern-cusp intellectual poet. His voice is well defined: he knows of what he speaks, and he is keen to utilize the power of his vantages to illuminate.”—Alfred Arteaga, University of California, Berkeley
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781609385835 |
| PRICE | $45.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 392 |
Featured Reviews
Joseph S, Reviewer
Paracritical Hinge: Essay, Talks, Notes, Interviews by Nathaniel Mackey Mackey is an American poet, novelist, anthologist, literary critic, and editor. He is the Reynolds Price Professor of Creative Writing at Duke University and a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. Mackey is currently teaching a poetry workshop at Duke University. He has been editor and publisher of Hambone since 1982 and he won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2006. In 2014, he was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and in 2015 he won Yale's Bollingen Prize for American Poetry.
Paracritical Hinge refers to the pivotal point of the combination of poetry, fiction, and art. Mackey examines several subjects including an interesting examination of phenology, the poetry of the Vietnam War, and jazz. He also discusses writers and arts in his work like Amiri Baraka and John Coltrane.
This is clearly a work for those familiar with Mackey and his work. The reading is not easy especially for one whose field of study and interest are not strongly connected to Mackey's. The writing in the body of the work is complex with plenty of names and themes that are understood to be known. I had to skip through the introduction because it was over my head. I found it a little odd that I could follow along in sections where I had an understanding of the subject matter but was lost in the introduction that was supposed to introduce the subject and ease me into it. A difficult but rewarding work that clearly is not for everyone.
