Marilyn Nelson

What they're saying

"a poet of stunning power, able to bring alive the most rarified and subtle of experiences."

 

Using domestic settings and memories of her own childhood, Nelson fashions poetry which "sometimes sings, sometimes narrates" —Kirkland C. Jones, Dictionary of Literary Biography

 

“Her words teach us how to praise ourselves by praising each other.” —Yusef Komunyakaa

 

Nelson’s poetry “reaches back through generations hemmed in on all sides by slavery and its antecedents; all along the way she finds sweetness, and humor, and more complicated truth than its disguises have revealed.” —Suzanne Gardinier, Parnassus

 

“quietly lyrical” voice and poems of “simple wisdom and straightforward, indelible stories.” —Miller Williams, African American Review

Collections

 

Faster Than Light 2012

The Cachoeira Tales 2005

The Thirteenth Month 2005

The Fields of Praise 1997

Euripides, 1 1997

Magnificat 1994

The Homeplace 1990

Mama's Promises 1985

Books for Young Adults

 

American Ace 2016

My Seneca Village 2015

How I Discovered Poetry 2014

Sweethearts of Rhythm 2009

The Freedom Business 2008

Miss Crandle's School 2007

A Wreath for Emmet Till 2005

Fortune's Bones 2004

Carver, a Life in Poems 2001

 

Books for Young Children

Ostrich and Lark forthcoming 2012

A Little Bitty Man 2011

Snook Alone 2011

The Ladder 2006