A. Van Jordan was born and raised in Akron, Ohio. He earned a BA in English Literature from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, and an MA in communications from Howard University. After attending poetry readings in the Washington, D.C., area in his late 20s, Jordan became interested in writing poetry. He received an MFA in creative writing from Warren Wilson College in 1998. Jordan’s collections of poetry include Rise (2001), M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (2005), Quantum Lyrics (2007), and The Cineaste (2014). Music, film, and history have influenced his work. The Cineaste takes cinema history as its inspiration, featuring poems inspired by films such as The Birth of a Nation, Metropolis, and Last Year at Marienbad. The poems in M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A concern the life of MacNolia Cox, the first African American finalist in the National Spelling Competition in 1936. Quantum Lyrics delves into physics, racism, history, and Albert Einstein’s work for human rights. Rise won a PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was selected for the Book of the Month Club of the Academy of American Poets. M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A received the Anisfield-Wolf Award. Jordan is also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. He has taught at a number of graduate writing programs, among them the University of Texas at Austin, Warren Wilson College, and the University of Michigan.
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RisePoemsFrom"Sitting In On the Set"
His music swims in the room’s colors,
Not making the décor any prettier,
In its war of blood and tar;
His bleak tone blare into blackness
Of hard luck and lights.
Easier to sit in the front row
With your feet propped on stage
Than to play in a room where
Notes are harder to hold than a cheating lover.
As everyone heckles advice,
Somebody tells a fable about
Dignity and the failed attempt.
Rise:Poems -
RisePoemsFrom"The Walkin’ Blues"
Toes painted by her lover,
what woman wouldn’t feel lucky
walking barefoot over a carpet of two men:
one unknowing,
one in it for the game?
When she reaches for her shoes,
it will be only a moment before her husband rattles keys
at the front door. Her lover must stretch under the bed
for his wingtips before tip-toeing
out the back.
Rise:Poems -
RisePoemsFrom"Voodoo"
Once, I showed Ethelbart
A love poem
I wrote about a woman
I was dating.
What you think, man?
I asked.
His comments were an X
He drew from one end
To the other.
Then he folded it up.
Gave it back to me.
Man, don’t you know,
I broke up
With that woman.
Rise:Poems
“For several books now, A. Van Jordan has been proving himself master of the dramatic monologue. His skill is especially dazzling in The Cineaste as he turns to cinema, that other realm of persona and projection. With an imagination illuminated by empathy, Jordan inhabits the eye of the camera, the eye of the actor, and the ‘I’ of a viewer tethered to image and history. These terrific poems give shape to lives made of light.” —Terrance Hayes
“Rather than writing about films, Jordan remakes them—serving as audience, director, editor, he recasts characters, reshoots scenes, turns the cameras around.” —NPR [on The Cineaste]
"Fearless hybridization . . . Jordan creates spaces where physics and poetry, comic books and jazz, memory and loss, come together." —American Prospect [on Quantum Lyrics]
Selected Works
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- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books
- E-Books
- Kobo
- Barnes & Noble