Surfaces and Masks
A book-length poem by Clarence Major

"Major has an astonishing ability to assimilate miles and miles of ordinary reality." - Stephen Stepanchev, American Poetry Since 1945

"A recognized pathfinder in the New Black Literature." - Parnassus

In Surfaces and Masks, Clarence Major is a pointillist, impressionist, breakneck historian, creating a tapestry that utilizes and satirizes his chosen subject, Venice. With the same unstoppable intelligence that inspired his award-winning novel, My Amputations, Major creates a thoroughly modern picture of this glittering, grandiose swamp. The hopeless contradictions of the city mirror his own, yielding a multiform epic of cool irritation, green-headed ducks, and profuse growth.

"A good poem," says the author, "is a self-portrait with weeping and laughter. I want my poems to make faces: to solve difficult problems without discussing them." Surfaces and Masks turns the world inside-out, affirming, in the end, that Venice has nothing to offer that is not already in the spirit.

Clarence Major’s previous books include All-Night Visitors, The Syncopated Cakewalk, and Emergency Exit. His work has been widely anthologized, and he has received the Pushcart Prize and the Western States Book Award.

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