Blue Fasa

Download or read book Blue Fasa written by Nathaniel Mackey and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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, carries forward what the New Yorker has described as the “mythological conception” and “descriptive daring” of his two intertwined serial poems. A long song that's one and more than one, 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. The book 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 a truer sense of being and belonging.