Olio

Encyclopedic, ingenious, and abundant, this outsized second volume from Jess (Leadbelly) celebrates the works and lives of African-American musicians, artists, and orators who predated the Harlem Renaissance. Among its compendium of forms and characters is a series of sonnets tracking the uplifting performances of the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the career of the once-enslaved autistic piano prodigy "Blind Tom" Wiggins. The orator Henry "Box" Brown, who famously escaped from the South in a crate, tells his own story by rewriting-taking back, as it were-some of John Berryman's "Dream Songs." Elegant paragraphs trace the career of the expatriate sculptor Edmonia "Wildfire" Lewis. Above all, however, the volume celebrates-and works to redeem, against old stereotypes-ragtime music and the ragtime composer Scott Joplin. Prose segments that carry the force of historical novels portray imaginary interviews, during the 1920s, with real people who knew Joplin: the interviewer, a disfigured WWI veteran, serves as a stand-in for Jess himself. Line drawings by Jessica Lynne Brown, exuberant typography, and the innovative layout reinforce the grand tribute that Jess's words project: "the nocturnes boiling beneath the roof of my mouth extinguish each burning cross," the singer Sissieretta Jones says, while Joplin himself explains what he meant to do: "lookin past the past and syncopatin into the future." (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

African American history (indeed, American history) is inseparable from African American music, as evidenced by this remarkable new collection from National Poetry Series winner Jess (for leadbelly, also an LJ Best Book). In a lightning-strike act of blending historical research and imagination, Jess's poems range from the post-Civil War era to World War I to vivify mostly undocumented and underappreciated musicians, from the pianist Blind Tom to the Fisk Jubilee Singers to Scott Joplin. Jess effectively captures both collective and individual history: "Tell me, if we done burst loose from bondage,/ do our songs still carry hurt like a mule?" cry out the Jubilee Singers, who later say, "We boil the air with hallelujah's balm/ 'cause each of us got a story to yell." Inevitably, he visits the minstrel show (lists of so-called coon songs smack readers in the face), while elsewhere creating two- or three-column poems that can be read across, up and down, or at tangents. Though an appendix explains how the 10" X 16" foldout pages can be detached and rolled to effect different readings experiences, amazingly, these poems read like smoothest silk in two dimensions as well. VERDICT Highly recommended; this formally risky collection proves to be a character-rich, historically informed page-turner. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.