Back Pages, Selected Poems by A.L. Nielsen

Ranging across four decades and selecting from nine volumes, Back Pages is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. A book that reflects and provokes the political struggles and poetry wars that have marked its era, Nielsen’s Selected Poems is at once a lyric intervention and a poetics laboratory. With the rhythmic inclinations of a stage musician, these poems perform social criticism and philosophical meditations. This is for the kind of audience that dances in their seats and thinks on their feet.

'Artful, musical, and deceptively gentle, these poems reveal an uncompromising moral purpose. A. L. Nielsen is indeed a “stepping razor,” honed, witty and dangerous all at once. Pay attention.'

--Beth Joselow

A.L. Nielsen was the first winner of the Larry Neal Award for poetry. Born in central Nebraska, he came of age in Washington D.C. and Arlington, attending the University of the District of Columbia, where he studied with Gil Scott-Heron and C.L.R. James. He earned a PhD from the George Washington University, where his professors included Amiri Baraka. Nielsen has taught at Howard University, San Jose State University, UCLA, Loyola Marymount University and the Penn State University, where he serves as the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature. He also teaches graduate seminars in poetry at Central China Normal University, in Wuhan. His works of criticism include Reading Race, Writing between the Lines, Black Chant, C.L.R. James: A Critical Introduction, Integral Music and The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka. Among his awards are The Kayden Award for best book in the Humanities, a Gustavus Myers citation for scholarship on the subject of intolerance in the United States, the Josephine Miles Award, the Gertrude Stein Award, the Darwin Turner Award and an American Book Award for his edition of Lorenzo Thomas’s Don’t Deny My Name. His poems have appeared in both Best American Poetry (selected by John Ashbery) and Best American Experimental Writing (selected by Charles Bernstein and Tracie Morris).

Book Information:

· Paperback:288 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books]
· ISBN: 978-1-60964-381-2