Blue Fasa
By: Nathaniel Mackey
Series: New Directions paperbook -- NDP1304; New Directions paperbook -- 1304.
Publisher: New Directions Publishing
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 155
ISBN-13: 9780811224451
Subjects: American poetry
Work titles: Poems
Description: 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.