Major Jackson (left) will appear along with Annette Frost (right) as the featured speakers at this fall’s Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture. Jackson’s newest book of poetry, Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems, features 30 new poems as well as work from his previous five collections. Photos courtesy of Blue Flower Arts and Frost

Poetry

Major Jackson, Award-Winning Poet and Host of The Slowdown Podcast, Reads from New Collection at Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Tonight

Event will also feature BU alum Annette Frost, director of the Favorite Poem Project

For poets Major Jackson and Annette Frost, a poem is likely to begin with a quotidian event.

“Mostly I’ll encounter some things in my day-to-day that will announce itself—whether it’s something I’ve seen or something that appeals to the senses,” says Jackson, author of six poetry collections, the latest the just-published Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems, and host of the popular poetry podcast The Slowdown. “Poems begin for me with the body, with the senses.”

Frost (GRS’17), director of the Favorite Poem Project, and a College of Arts & Sciences lecturer in creative writing, says that for her, the idea for a poem can come from something as simple as a glance at the breakfast table. “The way we tie our shoes, how we interact in different social settings, and the choices we make about the planet’s future are all part of the story of being human—and that is what my writing is about,” Frost says. 

The two will read from their work at the annual fall Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture tonight at BU Hillel, followed by a reception and a book signing. The event is free and open to the public.

By his own admission, Jackson came to poetry in a roundabout way. He majored in accounting at Temple University, but fell in love with poetry through his elective literature courses. A two-year fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage allowed him to pursue writing full time. He published his first collection, Leaving Saturn, in 2002. Those poems explored the Black neighborhoods in Philadelphia where he grew up. His most recent, Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 2023), has 30 new poems as well as selections drawn from his previous five books. 

Now a professor of English, director of creative writing, and the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, Jackson has earned a reputation as one of the nation’s most exciting contemporary poets. His poems explore a wide and eclectic range, from travel, the plight of refugees, and the pleasures of the natural world to domestic and racialized violence, bitcoin, and climate change. They are populated by references to famous writers, cloistered nuns, and figures from ancient Greece, as well as pop culture figures like Ariane Grande and Spike Lee.

“I think my work tends to want to exalt humanity,” he says. 

Jackson grew up surrounded by music, and he sang in a boys choir in high school. A lover of all kinds of music, including classical, hip-hop, jazz, rap, and bluegrass, it’s hardly surprising that music informs his work. “I’m feeding myself those particular sounds,” he says: “So much of writing poetry is not about capturing feelings or emotions or memory, but making a sound that is distinctly ours.”

When writing, he often reads a poem aloud to determine where to take it next. “A lot of my writing is working out some cadence or rhythm and as I recite those words back to myself, I’m also listening to the next utterance. It’s almost like I can hear the next beat, I can hear the next sentence,” he says. “As I’m reading those words, as I’m saying those words, typically something will hook in.” 

Throughout his career, Jackson has been a leading champion for poetry and its role in contemporary life, both through his teaching, as poetry editor of The Harvard Review, and more recently, as host of The Slowdown, which airs mornings on many public radio stations across the country. The daily podcast introduces audiences to a particular poem and poet. Jackson took over hosting duties last January, replacing Ada Limón, who stepped down to become US poet laureate. “I see poetry as an estate that needs stewardship,” Jackson says. “This was a platform that allowed me to continue what I had been doing for a number of years.” 

When selecting which poems to feature, he says, he’s thinking about poems that translate as something a listener—as opposed to a reader—can use in their lives as they go into their day. “I have to on-ramp the poem in such a way that someone hears it both as music and also as nourishment.” 

Like Jackson, Annette Frost discovered the pleasures of poetry as a child. “I wrote my very first poem in kindergarten and gave it as a gift to my school principal. Later, in elementary school, I would hide a notebook under my desk to write during my other subjects,” she says. “I think I wrote some of my best poems in high school during biology.” Several years later, sitting in her first poetry workshop as an undergrad at NYU, she says, she knew immediately she was “on the right track for myself.”

Frost’s work has appeared in numerous publications, among them Euonia Review and 236 Magazine. She is currently at work on a collection of poems, tentatively titled No Entry, that chronicles her husband’s fraught experience immigrating to the United States. 

Being a part of BU’s MFA program was a chance to be part of what she says is an “incredible community.” 

“The poetry cohort is like being on a team. Everyone is gently competitive with and supportive of one another,” Frost says. “Being part of such a small and intensive program focused 100 percent on poetry day and night for over a year changed everything about my writing. I learned how to make every decision intentionally and not leave things up to the muse.”

As a lecturer in the Creative Writing Program, Frost makes a point of urging her students to trust their own story: “Know that your life is enough to pull book after book out of. Your best writing will come when you find a calm confidence in your own voice.” 

The Robert Lowell Memorial Poetry Reading, featuring Major Jackson and Annette Frost (GRS’17), is Tuesday, October 3, at 7:30 pm at BU Hillel, River Room, fourth floor, 213 Bay State Road. A reception and book sale and signing will follow. The event is free and open to the public. 

The Robert Lowell Memorial Reading was established by Nancy Livingston (COM’69) and her husband, Fred M. Levin, through the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.