S6:E28 Pt II: C.S. Giscombe talks with Roxi Power about Negro Mountain

The Hive Poetry Collective

C.S. Giscombe—known to his friends as Cecil--talks with long-time friend Roxi Power about the second half of his newest poetry book, Negro Mountain) (University of Chicago Press) which was recommended by a New York Times critic as one of the 5 best poetry books of 2023.

In the second part of our interview, Giscombe dives deep into the book’s central concepts, such as “negro luck” and the “the long story of evil” through totemic figures that reappear in dreams and landscapes, including wolves and jaguars. Drawing on stories and ideas from Ed Roberson (“the idea of image and the idea of capture”), we explore ways to write about “what’s there…but not seen,” including the namesake for the real Negro Mountain in Pennsylvania: an 18th c. African-American man named Nemesis, whom Giscombe calls “the long shadow on the mountain.” The book collages dreams, history, and multiple forms of address—"speeches, elocution, and theatrical masks”—to explore monstrous cultural projections.

C.S. Giscombe teaches at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, where he is the Robert Hass Chair in English. His prose and poetry books include Negro Mountain, Prairie Style, Ohio Railroads (“a long poem in the form of an essay”), Similarly (selected poetry and new work), Border Town, etc. In progress are Railroad Sense and Medicine Book. He is a long-distance cyclist.