Here is a carefully curated culling of poems from Angela Jackson, a literary daughter of Gwen Brooks. Covering most of her publishing career, Luminous is a summation of Ms. Jackson's poetic prowess. Economical and precise in her language, Angela Jackson is presciently effective at spotlighting the essential meanings of daily gestures whose import is too often obscured by the opaqueness of familiarity.

Although most of her poetry clearly grows out of the oral tradition, she is no neo-minstrel dealing in "deses" and dats." Rather than verbal slapstick and melodrama, Angela aims for the deepness of jazz in her inventive fashioning of words. She is meticulous in her use of metaphor, subtle in her employ of simile, and breathtakingly imaginative as tartly succinct fifties-era Miles Davis the language of romanticism. Just as Miles completely redefined the art of the ballad, Angela is wondrously adept at articulating intimate dreams and desires.

You have always been standing under this sky with me.
I have always been here somewhere near you.
When you bend down and I arch up, my breasts ending
like starpoints pushing against you.

And, like Miles, Angela has a funky and sardonic side. Reminiscent of the insistent twang of an up-south guitar string vibrating beneath black fingers in some Southside Chicago bar, Angela unfailingly unfurls the lyricism of man-(and woman)-made moans: the moan of satisfaction...

We curl together. Sex, breath,
and all. Till I'm breathless.
Quivering. Complete.

...as well as all those mean miscellaneous moans we groan between the sunshine and the rain of living our lives in late 20th century America.

Syringe-thin men with bloody eyes
line up for the empty soup kitchens.

Like the magician she is, Angela constantly surprises us with an unforeseen twist that turns cliche and commonality into manna and nectar.

Festival

you have heard
the impassioned question
of pacifists:
what if they gave a war
and nobody
came?

this query's distressed
a-whisper
inverted and the same:
what if you gave
a love
and nobody came?

Whether cleaning fish or dusting the furniture, catching a train or leaping across rooftops, Angela accurately reads what's really going on inside of us. Her poetry is a looking glass within which we catch brilliant visions of the luminous dark of our ourselves.

Kalamu ya Salaam
kalamu@aol.com