Holding Company

In Holding Company, Major Jackson explores art, literature, and music as a kingdom, or an empire, a dark, seductive force in our lives. In an effort to understand desire, beauty, and love as transient anodynes to metaphysical loneliness, he invokes Constantine Cavafy, Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, and Dante Rossetti.

from "Jewel-Tongued"
*The stillness of a lover's mouth

assaulted me. I never wearied of anecdotes

on the Commons, gesturing until I scattered

myself into a luminance, shining over a city

of women. Was I less human or more? I hear still

my breathing echoing off their pillows. So many

eyes like crushed flowers. Our fingers splayed

over a bed's edge. We were blown away.*