Harbors and spirits

Poet, novelist and critic, Jeffery Renard Allen brings a number of characteristics to his first collectional of poems. He adapts jazz and blues forms to lyric poetry and uses a variety of cultural sources to draw together materials that exist in a shared mythology. The result has the directness and clarity of an African-American Homeric hymn. Rich in musicality, Allen's work offers an extraordinary breadth of reference and discovery.