Serendipitously read this during Black History Month. This book defies description because it is such a complex blend of art forms - poetry, drawings, historical documents, shaped verse, and other genres all brought together seamlessly to represent African-American performers from the end of the Civil War until WWI who became minstrel performers by choice or by force. According to the publisher's blurb, "Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them." This seeks to honor them and their experiences. Running throughout is the attempts by Julius Trotter to obtain information about Scott Joplin to submit to WEB DuBois' NAACP magazine, the Crisis. That's some name-dropping right there, but there are other examples of well-known people mixed in with fictional characters. It reminded me of Spoon River Anthology - in that each poem represents a character but this is much more ambitious and far-reaching. According to the frontispiece, an olio is a miscellaneous mixture of heterogeneous elements; a hodgepodge, a miscellaneous collection (as of literary or musical selections) and also the second part of a minstrel show. This book somehow represents all of these definitions. I'm always amazed and impressed when authors can envision a completely fresh presentation of material in a completely new form. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize - I can see why! ( )

very ambitious, which is especially commendable considering the state of poetry in 2016.

the poems are okay. they're better in free form. that's where most of Jess's ability is displayed. he manages to work up some unexpected emotion in the stories of real musicians who lived not too long ago. as for the "syncopated sonnets", they almost always read awkwardly, both because of his struggle with iambic pentameter and his struggle with combining two poems. it very rarely adds significant new meaning, and it usually feels more like a gimmick on the level of Mad Fold-Ins.

the "interviews" are obscenely bad, with everyone sounding like the same Hollywood Wise Negro stereotype and rambling in Poetic Ebonics in the exact same way. extravagant similes are worked into every other run-on sentence. unlike poetry, prose demands a lot of space to fill with imagery, so after only a couple of pages, Jess runs out of ways to describe a honky tonk piano and ends up saying "battered upright" about 50 times.

ultimately, it seems like a major purpose of this book was to create an air of authenticity, which would make the commentary on race and slavery more effective. but the one word i would use to describe it -- inauthentic. ( )

Olio is a sprawling work in its breadth and depth of exploration of perspectives, voice, and narratives of African American musicians and performers. The way Jess enters into each story is impressive all while maintaining an awareness of the rampant violence and degredation of the social context of these folks. I really hope to read more history approached in this manner.

One of the most creative books I have read in years. The thrust of the book is a series of Black musicians many of whom were slaves early in their lives. Scott Joplin (ragtime great) is a person we revisit throughout the book. I did not realize that George Gershwin basically stole the melody of Alexander's Ragtime Band from Joplin. There is art, interviews and foldout pages as well as some great poetry. This makes for a captivating history as well as a collection of beautiful verse. I am so glad that I found and read this wonderful book. ( )

This is an amazing work of poetry, prose, drawing, and 3-D construction. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, it is a breathtaking exploration of African Americans' experience through the final years of slavery and "reconstruction" and Jim Crow years. Music is a main character and we hear from minstrels, conjoined twins, Scott Joplin's widow, a blind piano prodigy, and so many others....

Here is one excerpt, in the voice of John William "Blind" Boone (1864-1927), "sprung from a Yankee bugler and a newly freed mother, his sight was sacrificed to encephalitis at the age of six months. Possessed by a prodigious memory, perfect pitch, and a particular partiality to piano, from which he sees and he sees and he sees..."

I swear it now and I swore it then --
I'll never slave my music for no man
again. I ain't bendin over no piano
like a plow on a sharecropper's piece.
I ain't no beast bent to push ivory keys.
I'll be free as I play or I won't play at all
--I'll just play the notes inside my skull
alone in the dark where they roam
around loose. 'Cause playing like a slave,
I'd just step myself straight into
a hangman's noose.

My library copy is littered with flags and I will be purchasing this work, partly because it warrants frequent revisiting and partly because this artist deserves to have his work sitting on the shelves of the most ardent lovers of literature. ( )