Close Readings in a Virtual Space: Major Jackson

This free, participatory event (taking place via Zoom) features Major Jackson, one of our favorite poets, leading an intimate, virtual group reading-through/thinking through of a single poem . Neither explicitly teaching nor explaining, our special guest poet will serve as your expert tour-guide to explore this featured poem as a group.

Whether already well-versed in the “close reading” of poems or having never been quite sure you’ve been “getting it,” CLOSE READINGS IN A VIRTUAL SPACE provides a digital gathering for taking a refreshing deep dive into poetry.

Actively participate or simply listen and learn!

The event will last about an hour and conclude with a brief reading of poetry by our special guest poet.

Major Jackson is the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli (Michigan: 2022) and five volumes of poetry, most recently, The Absurd Man (Norton: 2020). His edited volumes include Best American Poetry 2019 and Library of America’s Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.