A Beat Beyond at Greenlight Bookstore

Major Jackson and Amor Kohli in conversation

Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY, hosted a virtual event with Major Jackson to discuss A Beat Beyond, his recently published collection of essays, interviews, and notes. Spanning several decades, the collection passionately surveys the radical shifts of the art and notes poetry as a necessity for a modern sensibility. Jackson revels in the work of poetry not only to assess the intellectual and spiritual dimensions of poets, but to amplify the controversies and inner conflicts that define our age.

“This book is published under the auspices of University of Michigan’s Poets on Poetry Series which, I can say as an autodidact, probably accounts for about a quarter of my education. To that end, like all pieces of writing, each one of these — blog posts, lectures — each one of them began as a kind of performance but then quickly became personally instructive, and in some instances instigative in a way an Ars Poetica sets the agenda for one’s future works.” — Major Jackson

Jackson opened the event by reading an essay from the collection, and was then joined by the book’s editor, Amor Kohli, who guided the conversation with a series of questions. They discussed the nature of looking back on one’s body of work; early influences of hip-hop reflected in rhythmic patterning and rhyme usage; the freedom and expression of poetry as a way into self-realization; and the connection between the senses and language. The event concluded with a few questions from the audience asking how religion influences Jackson’s work, and if there is poetry in the lives of those without a college degree, or those who don’t read at all, and how it operates.

“I did not realize the extent to which — almost in a pleading kind of fashion — I was making a case for poetry as a form of writing ourselves towards a greater sense of ourselves. Or if I have to contend with, for example, racialized violence, state-sanctioned violence, it’s on a page where I can most express my individual self against any outside construction. So the body of work, the poems — in Whitmanian fashion — really do become a place in which I get to understand who I am and to, I say, hammer a self into being. I’m thinking about what it means to write within inherited forms, or to try to create a sense of self in forms that have not been explored before. And that’s where freedom comes in: freedom to experiment, to imagine, to push up against, to borrow — all of that is connected.” — Major Jackson

Jackson will be participating in readings, discussions and events this fall in support of A Beat Beyond, details below:

• 9/16 Grolier Poetry Bookshop - Cambridge, MA
• 10/15 Twin Cities Book Festival - Minneapolis, MN
• 10/16 Southern Festival of Books - Nashville, TN
• 10/20 Dodge Poetry Festival - Newark, NJ
• 10/23 Byrd’s Books (with Brian Clements) - Bethel, CT
• 10/27 Free Library of Philadelphia (with Ross Gay) - Philadelphia, PA