Paracritical Hinge: Essays, Talks, Notes, Interviews (Contemporary North American Poetry)

Paracritical Hinge is a collection of varied yet interrelated pieces highlighting Nathaniel Mackey’s multifaceted work as writer and critic. It embraces topics ranging from Walt Whitman’s interest in phrenology to the marginalization of African American experiential writing; from Kamau Brathwaite’s “calibanistic” language practices to Garcia Lorca’s flamenco aesthetic of duende and its continuing repercussions; from H.D.’s desert measure and coastal way of knowing to the altered spatial disposition of Miles Davis’s trumpet sound; from Robert Duncan’s Vietnam War poetry to the emancipatory potential of collaborative practices; from serial poetics to diasporic syncretism; from the lyric poem’s present-day predicaments to gnosticism. Offering illuminating commentary on these and other artists including Amiri Baraka, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Wilson Harris, Jack Spicer, John Coltrane, Jay Wright, and Bob Kaufman, Paracritical Hinge also sheds light on Mackey’s own work as a poet, fiction writer, and editor.