S6 E20: C.S. Giscombe talks with Roxi Power, Pt. 1

The Hive Poetry Collective

C.S. Giscombe talks about the first 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.

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 Towns, etc. In progress are Railroad Sense and Medicine Book. He is a long-distance cyclist.

In Negro Mountain, Giscombe writes about a ridge straddling the Mason-Dixon line in Pennsylvania and Maryland called Negro Mountain. Named after "Nemesis", a man in the 1750s who took a bullet from a Native American man that was intended for a white man, Negro Mountain is provides fertile grounds for exploring complex relationships between people, wildlife--especially wolves--and location.

The book's speaker and characters from his series of 7 Dreams that open the book are shape shifters, moving fluidly between an educated "country doctor" and monstrous personas--including werewolves and jaguars--embodying hybridity and cultural projections.

For over 50 years, Giscombe has written eloquently about borders, geography, and maps, beginning with Giscome Road. His newest book is a tour de force deserving a two-part interview. C.S. (known to his friends as Cecil) talks with his longtime friend from their Cornell University days, Roxi Power, about the granular details of the first part of his book as well as the grander sweep of his career and poetic preoccupations.

You can hear Cecil read from Negro Mountain during his Hive Live! reading with Nancy Miller Gomez at Bookshop Santa Cruz June 9, 7pm.