All Books - Clarence Major

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Fiction
Poetry
Non-Fiction
Anthologies
Art

Four Days In Algeria

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The Glint of Light

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Golden Gate and Other Stories

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Dirty Bird Blues

“Major at his greatest versatility…”—John A. Williams<BR>

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Sporadic Troubleshooting: Poems

“To read… Sporadic Troubleshooting is to latch on to a Virgil of your own for a while.” –Robert Wrigley

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Thunderclouds in the Forecast

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The Lurking Place

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The Essential Clarence Major: Prose & Poetry

“This isn’t just a book of great literature. This is a book of history.”—Jericho Brown
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The Paintings and Drawings of Clarence Major

“I loved and learned something about and technique on every page.”—Charles Johnson, author of Middle Passage
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My Studio: Poems

“These are poems that that…lean heavy into the circumstances and depth of their being… Major honors his inner wealth…”—Major Jackson

Chicago Heat and Other Stories

“Unforced, heartfelt, and true, these stories are tonic for the soul.”—Gish Jen
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From Now On: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2015

“…poems of remarkable revelation, rare insight, sophisticated lyricism, and authentic joy in the world. I return to his work to be uplifted, inspired…”—Sam Hamill

Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar

“…distinctly spiritual, emphasizing the significance of traditional beliefs…”—Publishers Weekly

My Amputations

“A novel that is simultaneously a deception and one great, roaring self-revelation.”—The Nation

Down and Up

“…a poet who has mastered a language he owns…”—Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer prize winning poet

Myself Painting

“A feat of wizardry…freewheeling abandon.”—Jake Marmer, Chicago Tribune

Come By Here: My Mother's Life

“A brilliant rendering of a rich and eventual life…”—Andrew Billingsley

One Flesh

“Fresh and important… A significant new novel by an important writer…”—Robert Butler, African American Review

Such Was the Season

“…the ring of truth… a sort of cinema verité of common existence…”—The Los Angeles Times

Waiting For Sweet Betty

“Clarence Major is passionately committed to the aesthetics of language. His poems…demonstrate a tireless quest for the right word.”—Fanny Howe

Conversations With Clarence Major

Major explores his influences, the methods he applies to the different types of writing he does, and his childhood in Atlanta and Chicago’s South Side.

Necessary Distance: Essays and Criticism

“Clarence Major makes us see the universe…as a series of kaleidoscopic tableaux…”—Michel Fabre

Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African American Postmodernist

All Night Visitors

“A sincere and passionate writer.”—The New York Times

Configurations: New & Selected Poems, 1958–1998

“Passionate and controlled lyricism…The prevailing tonality of the poetry is quiet, almost philosophical…”—Library Journal

Reflex and Bone Structure

“…an exhilarating trip, with a new view at every turn… Cora couldn’t be more vivid.”—Thomas Lask, The NYT Book Review

The Garden Thrives: Twentieth-Century African-American Poetry

Fun and Games: Short Fictions

“Major…proves that he is one of only a handful of American writers capable of doing significant work in more than one genre.”—Russell Banks

Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang

Contains a comprehensive collection of African-American slang throughout history.

Calling the Wind: Twentieth-Century African-American Short Stories

Some Observations of a Stranger at Zuni in the Latter Part of the Century

Surfaces and Masks

A book-length poem that uses the city of Venice as its backdrop, considering issues of racial and national identity.

Inside Diameter: The France Poems

Emergency Exit

Major’s fourth novel is about people in a town in Connecticut that has just passed a law requiring all men to carry all women across all thresholds at all times.

The Syncopated Cakewalk

No

“This is a probing, honest book…”—George Davis, The NYT Book Review

The Cotton Club

Major’s fourth book of poetry preserves and presents a black past using themes of the mulatto, violence against blacks, the creation and development of jazz and blues.

Black Slang: A Dictionary of Afro-American Talk

Private Line

Symptoms & Madness

The Dark and Feeling: Reflections on Black American Writers and Their Works

Swallow the Lake

“Major writes poems with the resistant, angular surface of tumbled brick. As if the poem has been literally smashed. An improvisational, jazz-like quality.”—Kirkus