More Than Meat and Raiment

“James Baldwin called for 'a sentence as clean as a bone.' In her rangy new collection, Angela Jackson not only heeds that call but pushes past it, into subjects as elemental as bone—deeper than flesh, more essential than clothes. Peeling away surface layers to unveil raw truths, Jackson presents both the 'terror and delight' of African American experience. A poet whose courage matches her craft, Jackson offers a book of 'intelligent toughness,' written 'under the pressure of impregnable loss and dear / inherited hope.'” —Gregory Fraser, author of Little Armageddon: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2021)

“From Mississippi to Chicago, and all the peoples in-between, this is a collection that can help us companion each other.” —C.T. Salazar, The Clarion-Ledger

“Jackson’s oeuvre is needed more than ever. Her poems stream over a reader like cool, salty ocean waves, but like the ocean, they are full of depth and wonder.” —Luis J. Rodríguez, author of Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles (Curbstone, 2016)

“Angela Jackson’s dazzling poems express the tenderness and pain of growing up in Chicago during the Great Migration, and embark upon a much larger exploration of Black women, especially as mothers. She brings us complicated and deeply personal portraits of lives in all their ‘sweets, pleasantries, entities, and evil ways.’ That same clear-eyed vision turns in an instant to searing indictments of the systems built on racial and gender inequality. More Than Meat and Raiment is a powerful and beautiful book that adds to Angela Jackson’s impressive body of work.” —Mike Puican, author of Central Air: Poems (TriQuarterly Books, 2020)

PRAISE FOR ANGELA JACKSON
 
“Angela Jackson’s poems dwell in fervid topographies of family and myth, heart and tongue.” —Kevin Stein, author of Wrestling Li Po for the Remote
 
“Angela Jackson is a state treasure. She is a celebrated poet, novelist, biographer, playwright and professor whose work demonstrates the importance of vivid writing and inspirational literature to American life.” —John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University Carbondale
 
“Like the magician she is, [she] constantly surprises us with an unforeseen twist that turns cliché and commonality into manna and nectar.” —Black Book Review
 
“Jackson's ear is keen; her memory of traditions is crystal clear.” —Feminist Bookstore News
 
“Ms. Jackson owns a special and singular voice, it is clear music and breath.” —Haki R. Madhubuti, author of YellowBlack:The First Twenty-One Years Of A Poet’s Life, A Memoir
 
“Possessed of ancestral memory and foresight, she takes in the world with a lens as wide as Whitman’s, conjuring both history and the present moment from a tall and monumental place: the shoulders of Langston, Gwendolyn, Baldwin.” —Connie May Fowler, author of How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly