Books
origin story
“origin story is both intensely intimate and utterly everyman. These are poems of both great weight and profound lightness. . . It is impossible to read origin story and not feel obliged to think hard about one’s own upbringing, impossible not to be moved and changed by what these poems bring to light.”—Tim Seibles, author of Fast Animal
“From post–Korean War era to the present day, ongoing brutalities upon Black bodies, and the complexities of a speaker born to a Black-Asian mother and Black father, Jackson’s poems in origin story reveal the porous interconnectedness of our boundaries—bloodlines, memories, trauma, silences—and how origin stories and their contested retellings hold deep roots to our sense of betrayal and belonging.”—Esther Lee, author of Sacrificial Metal
“Gary Jackson’s origin story is a powerful meditation on how we return to and turn away from our beginnings. These exquisite poems search out the source of belonging, whether to people or place. Jackson deftly shows us what can happen when fracture begets connection and erasure becomes revelation. Elegiac, irreverent, and deeply American, this collection testifies to the persistence of memory.”—Amy Fleury, author of Sympathetic Magic
“In origin story, Gary Jackson delivers a work of beauty and talent. Like so much honey down our throats, he channels the voices of his mother, his grandparents, his family, and his encyclopedic knowledge of comics to create a new and necessary universe. It challenges racism and carried assumptions while creating an honest dialogue that ultimately ends with connection and compassion. These poems are where the body becomes word.” —Juan J. Morales, author of The Handyman’s Guide to End Times: Poems
Missing You, Metropolis
“Gary Jackson's Missing You, Metropolis embodies a voice uniquely shaped and tuned for the twenty-first century. Playful, jaunty, rueful, and highly serious--sometimes within a singular poem--this persona has been forged in the caldron of popular iconography, especially in the culture of the comic book. Anything is possible in such created time and space; immediate tension exists in a climate where otherworldly figures are defined by earthly matters and concerns. The funny-book world is a perfect landscape for innuendo and signification, and Jackson uses these aptly. This first collection of poems is gauged by a sophisticated heart.”
— Yusef Komunyakaa
“For all its disarming charm and surface breeziness, as well as the deliberate use of couplets and quatrains to mimic the formal borders that contain a comic’s narrative, this book sounds profound depths of rage, lust, sorrow, and estrangement. . . . Missing You, Metropolis heralds a new voice unafraid to embrace pop culture, and to discover in it a world at once paradoxical, desired, and cruel.”
— Rain Taxi Review of Books
Anthologies
The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry
Superstars of poetry have created work around both real-life and fictional superheroes in this
innovative collection of poetry and art. Both the original and reprinted work in this compilation are
by some of the most influential Black poets, including Lucille Clifton, Terrance Hayes, Nikki
Giovanni, and Tracy K. Smith, alongside striking illustrations by John Jennings, Kevin Johnson,
and many other visual artists…whether
taking the pop culture figures found in comics and films and placing them in unfamiliar territory,
as in editor Gary Jackson’s “Nightcrawler Buys a Woman a Drink,” or revisiting timeless
commentary on economic and social inequality, as in Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon,”
the offerings will please fans of both contemporary and classic poets. This unique volume is a
wonderful addition to library collections invested in the celebration of Black voices and Black
visual art.
— Allison Escoto, Booklist
Published by Blair
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song
—Edited by Kevin Young
Published by Library of America
Ice on a Hot Stove: A Decade of Converse MFA Poetry
— Edited by Denise Duhamel & Rick Mulkey
Published by Clemson University Press
A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South
—Edited by Cinelle Barnes
Published by Hub City Press
Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence
—Edited by Sarah Green
Published by Ohio University / Swallow Press
Bodies Built for Game: The Prairie Schooner Anthology of Contemporary Sports Writing
—Edited by Natalie Diaz & Hannah Ensor
Published by University of Nebraska Press
Multiverse! An Anthology of Superhero Poetry of Superhuman Proportions
—Edited by Rob Sturma & Ryk Mcintyre
Published by Write Bloody Publishing
Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books
—Edited by Bryan D. Dietrich & Marta Ferguson
Published by Minor Arcana Press
Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology
—Edited by Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow, Jerry Ma
Published by The New Press