In his latest collection A Man Ain’t Nothin’, Alabama poet Jason McCall explores themes around memory, music, labor, and Blackness. As Alina Stefanescu wrote in her review, “Using sweat as a symbol for Black labor, pain, and work, McCall employs idioms that expand throughout the text, returning to the labor which built a country founded upon the promise of white supremacy. Both formally and thematically, McCall’s poems enact a refusal to “buy-in” to the accommodations of a New South while seeking to identify the price of those railroads in himself.”
A masterful and award-winning poet, if you aren’t familiar with his work, take this opportunity to listen to him read “I’m Glad John Henry Died” during an exhibit at the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art in 2021. Currently teaching as a professor at the University of North Alabama, McCall has also published collections including Two-Face God, It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip Hop, Dear Hero, and Mother, Less Child. Read more of his work at his website.
