Metta Sáma
Tyehimba Jess. Olio. Wave Books.
Tyehimba Jess’s 2016 Olio is mammoth. Comprised of letters, interviews, sketches, architectural and mathematical poems, "Jubilees," songs, conversations, and formal poems, and accompanied by a playlist of musicians, Jess’s second offering introduces us to (reminds us of) thirteen "first-generation-freed voices" plus the Fisk Jubilee Singers, all of whom "coalesce in counterpoint, name nemeses, summon tongue …