With ambitious manipulations of poetic forms, Tyehimba Jess presents the sweat and story behind America’s blues, worksongs and church hymns. Part fact, part fiction, Jess's much anticipated second book weaves sonnet, song, and narrative to examine the lives of mostly unrecorded African American performers directly before and after the Civil War up to World War I. Olio is an effort to understand how they met, resisted, complicated, co-opted, and sometimes defeated attempts to minstrelize them.
WINNER of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
WINNER of the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry
WINNER of the 2017 Book Award from the Society of Midland Authors for Poetry
2016 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for poetry
2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award finalist
2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award finalist
Named a Top Poetry Book of 2016 by Library Journal
