Blue Fasa

Blue Fasa

<p><strong>A stellar new collection of poems by “the Balanchine of the architecture dance” (<em>The New York Times</em>), and winner of the National Book Award in poetry.</strong></p> Nathaniel Mackey’s sixth collection of poems, Blue Fasa, carries forward what the <em>New Yorker</em> has described as the “mythological conception” and “descriptive daring” of his two intertwined serial poems. A long song that's one and more than one, this collection takes its title from two related black musical traditions, a West African griot epic as told by the Fasa, a clan in ancient Ghana, and trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s hard bop classic “Blue Bossa,” influenced by the emergence of Brazilian bossa nova. The book opens with <em>the catch of the heart and the call of romance</em>, as it follows a band of travelers, refugees from history, on their incessant migrations through time, place, and polity toward a truer sense of being and belonging.