Holding Company

In Holding Company, Major Jackson explores art, literature, and music as a kingdom, or an empire, a dark, seductive force in our lives. In an effort to understand desire, beauty, and love as transient anodynes to metaphysical loneliness, he invokes Constantine Cavafy, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, and Dante Rossetti.

from “Jewel-Tongued”
   The stillness of a lover’s mouth
   assaulted me. I never wearied of anecdotes
   on the Commons, gesturing until I scattered
   myself into a luminance, shining over a city
   of women. Was I less human or more? I hear still
   my breathing echoing off their pillows. So many
   eyes like crushed flowers. Our fingers splayed
   over a bed’s edge. We were blown away.