Four Days in Algeria // Poems

PEN / REGINALD LOCKETT LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN LITERATURE – PRIZE-WINNING NOVELIST, POET, AND PAINTER – GEORGIA WRITER’S HALL OF FAME

Clarence Major’sFour Days in Algeria is a poetic feast of travel, taking us to Paris, Florence, Ghana, Algeria, and many other places. We also experience the seasons in fresh ways. Delicious food, too, is laid before us. There are quiet moments, as on a houseboat, where the poet is writing poetry. Major gives us adventurous encounters with ordinary life rendered through poems of dazzling agility and fearless bluntness. These are also poems of unfettered Augustan honesty. They radiate with lyrical purity. Allegorical and spontaneous, they are full of holiday energy as the poet passionately affirms life, whether as he travels or simply in quiet moments of reflection.

AmongClarence Major’sprevious sixteen poetry collections areSwallow the Lake(a National Council on the Arts winner),Configurations: New and Selected Poems(a National Book Award Bronze Medal winner), andSporadic Troubleshooting(2022). He has contributed poetry to theNew Yorker, Harvard Review, American Scholar, American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Literary Review, Ploughshares, and dozens of other periodicals. A Fulbright scholar, among Major’s other awards are a Western States Book Award, a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and a PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature. He was elected to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2021. Major is a distinguished professor emeritus of twentieth-century American literature at the University of California, Davis.

• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Publish Date: March 11, 2025
• Pages: 144
• Dimensions: 6.0 X 9.0 X 0.6 inches | 0.5 pounds
• Language: English
• Type: Paperback
• EAN/UPC: 9781636281780
• BISAC Categories: North African