{"product_id":"9780811216524","title":"Splay Anthem","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn a stunning new collection of poems of transport and transcendence, African-American poet Nathaniel Mackey's \"asthmatic song of aspiration\" scuttles across cultures and histories—from America to Andalucía, from Ethiopia to Vienna—in a sexy, beautiful adaptive dance.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart antiphonal rant, part rhythmic whisper, Nathaniel Mackey's new collection of poems, \u003ci\u003eSplay Anthem\u003c\/i\u003e, takes the reader to uncharted poetic spaces. Divided into three sections—\"Braid,\" \"Fray,\" and \"Nub\" (one referent Mackey notes in his stellar Introduction: \"the imperial, flailing republic of Nub the United States has become, the shrunken place the earth has become, planet Nub\")—\u003ci\u003eSplay Anthem\u003c\/i\u003e weaves together two ongoing serial poems Mackey has been writing for over twenty years, \u003ci\u003eSong of the Andoumboulou\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e\"Mu\"\u003c\/i\u003e (though \"mu no more itself \/ than Andoumboulou\").\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the cosmology of the Dogon of West Africa, the Andoumboulou are progenitor spirits, and the song of the Andoumboulou is a song addressed to the spirits, a funeral song, a song of rebirth. \u003ci\u003e\"Mu,\"\u003c\/i\u003e too, splays with meaning: \u003ci\u003emuni\u003c\/i\u003e bird, Greek \u003ci\u003emuthos\u003c\/i\u003e, a Sun Ra tune, a continent once thought to have existed in the Pacific. With the vibrancy of a Miró painting, Mackey's poems trace the lost tribe of \"we\" through waking and dreamtime, through a multitude of geographies, cultures, histories, and musical traditions, as poetry here serves as the intersection of everything, myth's music, spirit lift.  ","brand":"New Directions Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47016584446192,"sku":"9780811216524","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780811216524_p0.jpg?v=1763813486","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780811216524","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}