Olio - Tyehimba Jess

nWinner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry nWinner of the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry n nWinner of the 2017 Book Award from the Society of Midland Authors for Poetry n n2016 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for poetry n n2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist n n2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award finalist n nNamed a top poetry book of spring 2016 by Library Journal n nPart fact, part fiction, Tyehimba Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them. n nSo, while I lead this choir, I still find that nI'm being led...I'm a missionary nmending my faith in the midst of this flock...

nI toil in their fields of praise. When folks see nthese freedmen stand and sing, they hear their God nspeak in tongues. These nine dark mouths sing shelter; nthey echo a hymn's haven from slavery's weather.

n nDetroit native Tyehimba Jess' first book of poetry, leadbelly, was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. Jess, a Cave Canem and NYU Alumni, has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Jess is also a veteran of the 2000 and 2001 Green Mill Poetry Slam Team.

He exhibited his poetry at the 2011 TEDxNashville Conference. Jess is an Associate Professor of English at College of Staten Island.n n