Nathaniel Mackey and Such...

Hey everyone! Hope everyone is feeling better! I’m really looking forward to having Nathaniel Mackey in class today. As I was trying to read through some of hi poetry I kept finding myself coming back to similar themes and messages….not repetition necessarily but certainly a common thread throughout all of his work that kind of makes all of his work make sense and feel cohesive. After this investigating in Mackey’s work and additionally the book review assignment I’ve found myself thinking a lot about collections of poems. I’m really pretty curious about the concept of an entire compilation of poetry intentionally published together to form an interconnected and well-organized piece of work. It kind of reminds me of those pictures that are made up of a bunch of smaller pictures. While some of the individual pictures may or may not be related to each other or even to the final piece as a whole, each picture has its place and purpose in making the final picture what it is. While this is somewhat of an unrelated analogy it makes sense to me and is even more deliberate within Mackey’s work than in those kinds of pictures. His common thread extends through his individual books of poetry and weaves in and out of all of his writing and I don’t think that this is just what we’ve learned to call his “voice”. I think in his case it is far more than just a signature voice or style but rather an undertone that alone lacks meaning but in light of his other works is quite impressive and awesome.