... a vibrant, blistering, and often tender collection ... Heller Levi and Keller depart from the staid form of a Selected Poems collection, a fitting editorial choice given the spirit and timeliness of Jordan’s poems, which defy any attempts at classification by distinct decade and book. Instead, the editors use a style modeled after the poet’s own practice. Jordan often republished older poems in newer collections, so the editors follow her lead in organizing the selected poems in achronological order ... Jordan is an indispensable poet and theorist for the contemporary moment because she uses clear language to dream about multifaceted conceptions of liberation ... Readers have never been more ready to receive Jordan’s unsparing yet finely wrought works, distilled in this collection to the most powerful selections ... offers us multiple subtle gestures of existence as resistance, inviting us to take them up whenever we are ready.
A truly powerful collection of Jordan’s work, The Essential June Jordan is a nuanced and emotional exploration of race, sexuality and politics. The collection feels deeply personal and reflective; from June Jordan’s opening quote and series of photographs, through to the end which concludes with an afterword by poet Jericho Brown and explanations of each snapshot. Featuring poems from throughout her career, it is a collection that varies greatly whether in its poetic structure or the poetry’s wide ranging subject matter ... In trying to understand the poems and decide on a definitive message, Jordan’s poetry asks questions of us, they urge us to consider how life and society operates ... Despite the anger and the sadness, the collection is also filled with love, a theme that June Jordan writes aptly about through her work as a love poet ... I am in awe of June Jordan’s work and I wholeheartedly would recommend this collection to any poetry lover and anyone who is willing to give poetry a try. It is beautifully curated and a testament to the works that Jordan published during her life.
Creating a fresh playlist of such a critical voice in modern American poetry is both a significant challenge for the editors and a satisfying reward for us. The Essential June Jordan, edited by Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller, is a generous collection which samples poems—some unpublished—across decades, making one distinctly aware of how important Jordan is to our current discourse. The most indispensable poets—and she is easily on that list—are both of their time and oddly prescient, and that is proven repeatedly throughout this collection. What sets this book apart from others that try to capture the career-long portrait of a singular author between two covers is the editorial decision to present the work in an achronological manner ... This may not be the definitive compilation of Jordan’s oeuvre, whatever that might be, but it is decidedly a necessary one—and one that will rightly urge readers to seek out more of her work.
Be June Jordan for a few. Why not? She’s not with us anymore. Which is why this collection is so truly essential if we are to hang on to even a fraction of the extraordinary inheritance she left us. And it’s a great selection, The Essential June Jordan. All her beauties, thoughtfully and expertly selected by editors Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Heller. Her best. Her love poems ... There are over 80 poems in the book. Not all of them the most famous, but perhaps the most moving of those she published in life. And strangely, if you read cover to cover (a great way to feel these deep in your marrow) you get, at first, a sense that there were really two June Jordans (at least). One, the lover. The other, the one better known for her political works, for her activism. But keep reading. Start over and you will see both Junes live in each piece ... There is not much more to say. Read June Jordan. Read this book. Save it. Give it an important place on your bookshelf.
The Essential June Jordan, edited by Jan Heller Levi and Christoph Keller, has exquisitely and intentionally curated late poet June Jordan’s work. Boiling down the poems of such a prominent writer and activist is no easy task, but Levi and Keller have selected poems that will make readers think, explore, and admire Jordan’s legacy ... It’s evident in this collection that Jordan was a master of using language and form as vehicles to protest injustice in America ... The Essential June Jordan proves the power in June Jordan’s work. Her work called for us then and calls for us now, asking us to fight for each other and against what tears us apart, all while believing in the possibility of a better world.
Jordan’s greatest strengths lie in occupying the voices of Black Americans through her 'commitment,' as Jericho Brown says, 'to Black vernacular.' She also pulls the reader feet first toward a fiery examination of hypocrisy.
Wide in scope and singular in their articulation of atrocities, Jordan’s poems shine in this thoughtfully curated volume. Ordered so that each era of her work speaks to the next, her poems contemplate war [...] on a national, interpersonal, and intergenerational scale, and suggest that struggle may be inextricable from the human experience ... As she contemplates land, borders, race, and gender, the reader, too, is invited to look closely at the world around them. In these rich, generous poems, to hold and accept divisive truths is an act of love and solidarity.
