Inspired by Albert Camus's seminal Myth of Sisyphus, Major Jackson's
fifth volume subtly configures the poet as "absurd hero" and plunges
headfirst into a search for stable ground in an unstable world. We
follow Jackson's restless, vulnerable speaker as he ponders creation in
the face of meaninglessness, chronicles an increasingly technological
world and the difficulty of social and political unity, probes a failed
marriage, and grieves his lost mother with a stunning, lucid lyricism.
The arc of a man emerges; he bravely confronts his past, including his
betrayals and his mistakes, and questions who he is as a father, as a
husband, as a son, and as a poet. With intense musicality and verve,
The Absurd Man also faces outward, finding refuge in intellectual and
sensuous passions. At once melancholic and jubilant, Jackson considers
the journey of humanity, with all its foibles, as a sacred pattern of
discovery reconciled by art and the imagination.