Hard Gospel by A.L. Nielsen
Consistently, but always surprisingly, manages to insert a wry sensibility into the syncopations and velocities of the poetry. The surprises are what get me, of course. They occasion shifts of position. Perhaps they reflect them, too--some kind of nervous passion, riding the conflict between being obliged to negotiate social reality and being obliged not to? —Lyn Hejinian
Consistently, but always surprisingly, manages to insert a wry sensibility into the syncopations and velocities of the poetry. The surprises are what get me, of course. They occasion shifts of position. Perhaps they reflect them, too--some kind of nervous passion, riding the conflict between being obliged to negotiate social reality and being obliged not to? —Lyn Hejinian
Consistently, but always surprisingly, manages to insert a wry sensibility into the syncopations and velocities of the poetry. The surprises are what get me, of course. They occasion shifts of position. Perhaps they reflect them, too--some kind of nervous passion, riding the conflict between being obliged to negotiate social reality and being obliged not to? —Lyn Hejinian
Lyn Hejinian on the poetry of A.L. Nielsen
[On A Brand New Beggar]
Consistently, but always surprisingly, manages to insert a wry sensibility into the syncopations and velocities of the poetry. The surprises are what get me, of course. They occasion shifts of position. Perhaps they reflect them, too--some kind of nervous passion, riding the conflict between being obliged to negotiate social reality and being obliged not to?
[On Back Pages: Selected Poems]
If anyone had asked me three weeks ago if I knew the work, I'd have said yes and believed it. But clearly I've only known it piecemeal and incompletely--as I am now discovering. There is more than I knew, and, having access now to something like forty years of work gathered into a single volume, it is clear to me that its scope is far greater than I understood from reading any single A.L. Nielsen volume of poetry. In fact, I feel like I'm discovering a new poet--one to vastly admire and respect. And to learn from. BlazeVOX--and, especially, Jean-Philippe Marcoux--have done a brilliant job in making this book into a reality. But there wouldn't be anything were it not for the adept navigations made as you moved through a sometimes dangerous, even sometimes even impossible, social terrain into spaces of astute joyousness. Sometimes those moves happen quickly (and sometimes wittily), and I notice them, but I can never figure out just how you've made them. I just think Wow and read on.
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, Central China Normal University and the Penn State University, where he served as the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature. 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).