Gregory Pardlo . . . wants to explore the druidic function of art theworks of jazz musicians painters poets and others who live imaginativelyexpand reality and ... » 

Gregory Pardlo . . . wants to explore the druidic function of art theworks of jazz musicians painters poets and others who live imaginativelyexpand reality and make imagination free.Brenda Hillman from theintroduction Totem winner of the APRHonickman First Book Prize is thedebut of a poet who has been listening for decades. In his youth GregoryPardlo heard stories of factory hours and picket lines from his father in thebars clubs and on the radio he listens to jazz and blues the rhythms beatsand aspirations of which all of which seep into his poems. A former CaveCanem fellow Pardlo creates work that is deeply autobiographical driftingbetween childhood and adult life. He speaks a language simultaneously urban andhighbrow seamlessly switching from art analysis to sneakers hung over thetelephone lines. Deeply rooted in a bluecollar world he produces snapshots ofa life that is so specific it becomes universal. From Vincents Shoes On the wall above my desk a pen and ink affair which I copied from a printhanging in the sushi bar down the block inflected necks of pedestrians on abridge in the rain and here I hung the hightops from a power line. It was in meto do. I felt it in my gut the way Vincent might have felt the wheat fields andthe smoking socket of the sun rattling tweezed days late into the ear of analuminum bowl Gregory Pardlo teaches at Medgar Evers College The CityUniversity of New York and lives in Brooklyn. «