Books Noted
Major Jackson, Holding Company

W.W. Norton & Company, 2010

In Jackson's third poetry collection, each ten-line poem is a diorama of experience—in these spaces, scene and story occur, somehow as full and realized as short novels. Art, the body, and desire spark many of the vignettes, and sound saturates Jackson's language. From "The Giant Swing Ending in a Split":

           We both felt the past slip
from our shoulders, rose lipped and listening to
jet engines Doppler across the night....

                          My sleepsmile
and low whispers hers, too. O
delicious agony, I’m divided right
to my body's historic wharf.

At times mysterious and at others matter-of-fact, this collection provides much to savor in each of its small offerings.