I find myself writing poems about things I can't paint, writes Clarence
Major who, for 40 years, has been viewed by critics as a polymorphous
writer who has been iconoclast, black esthetician, modernist,
surrealist, postmodernist, and deconstructionist (World Literature
Today).
In Waiting for Sweet Betty, Major watches the world with careful
longing to capture the exchanges and conflicts between person and place.
Just as a painter juxtaposes colors and shapes, Major does the same with
words, often writing as an outsider in foreign places. He shifts
perspective away from the self, allowing words to play off one another
subtly--with puns, inverted/subverted cliches, and sweet bop
soundings--so that his vision might become anyone's. His subtle,
conversational style, is at once humble, playful, humorous, and studied,
and his stories can be seen as well as heard:
I ride backwards to see what I'm missing.
Big pines and big skies ride up and down and around,
Up and down and around then for a straight stretch.
A white pickup shooting along a white highway east with us.
Note I'm trying to call home but cannot.
Sky and brush and pine and salt-earth curving sharply, tilting away
--from Train Window Going and Coming
Clarence Major is a master of everyday language and textual fine-tuning,
showing an indebtedness to the Harlem Renaissance, to the Objectivists,
and to Black Mountaineers.--Publishers Weekly
Clarence Major was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry
for Configurations: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon). He is the
author of 10 books of poetry, nine novels, a short story collection, and
several books of nonfiction. He is the subject of two recent books:
Clarence Major and His Art (UNC Press) and Conversations with
Clarence Major (Mississippi). Major teaches American literature at the
University of California at Davis.
