Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), February 20, 2003, Thursday, FEATURES; BOOKS; Pg. 17, 1407 words, A look at the National Book Critics Circle nominees – Poetry   LEAVING SATURN, by Major Jackson, University of Georgia Press, $ 15.95   Small wonder that Al Young, in introducing "Leaving Saturn," calls Major Jackson's collection, "a debut album of a book." These assemblies of word, phrase, and line offer collages out of Romare Bearden, and their subtle meters have a musicality that conjures the back beats of an adolescence and adulthood in a Philadelphia stretching immeasurable latitudes away from the Main Line. For Jackson, the city's founding spawned a fallen place, where the prospect of "Penn's green countrie towne uncurled a shadow.../ that descended over gridiron streets like a black shroud." A darkness spreading more darkly into the present, inclusive of mainlining junkies, crack-smoking mothers, and daily sadnesses, such as those of Mr. Pate, who "swept his own shop/ for he had lost his best little helper Squeaky/ to cross fire." Still, there is resilience and vibrancy to this place and its people: grandmothers, musicians, break-dancing teens performing "Kangoled head spins," and people such as Mr. Pate, who endures, "gathering/ up clumps of fallen hair ... as though/ They were the fine findings of gold dust." Throughout, too, is the governing presence of the poet, whose "pen lifts like the blade of an oar/ out of cement... You row for reflection as every action has an equal,/ the stamina of legends; rowing is vital." (75 pp.) By Reamy Jansen