Marilyn Nelson Biography

Questions on this topic? Just ask!

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Marilyn Nelson

Skillfully handling narrative and lyric forms, poet Marilyn Nelson evokes complex visions of life through a simple style, colloquial language, and functional allusions that often carry charming humor and ironic power. Nelson's sensibility is essentially religious; the speaking voice, often probling the interior life, is preoccupied with enduring spiritual ideals. The poet's "double-consciousness"--the dual awareness of African and American ancestry--impacts her search for poetic forms, as evident in her efforts to weave their literary traditions into a kind of collage. Her art also suggests her sense of the artist as mythmaker, reinterpreting the modern American ethos in light of traditional folk forms and values. Thus, metrical and formal elements of Euro-American traditional modes of expression--sonnets, villanelles, blank verse--and African American rhythmic praise-songs are fused into a medium that underlines the poet's sense of the complexity of her Americanness: her diverse personal and cultural mixture. Simultaneously, Nelson validates the cultural and aesthetic importance of African American folk forms such as the blues and the chanted sermon by weaving their racy vernacular expressions, imagery, and worldviews into both free verse and Western traditional forms.

Read the rest of this Biography with our Marilyn Nelson Access Pass.