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12 individual poets contribute a jazz-themed poem dedicated to a particular month, resulting in a 2026 calendar of jazz poetry that winds through the year with a variety of poetic styles and voices who share their journeys with the music, tying it into the month they were tasked to interpret. Along the way you will encounter the likes of Sonny Stitt, Charles Mingus, Jaco Pastorius, Wynton Kelly, John Coltrane, and Nina Simone.
This edition, August, features Daniel Warren Brown’s poem “August: (for Four August Jazz Babies)“
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August, 2026
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August
(for Four August Jazz Babies)
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by Daniel Warren Brown
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“Harvest Moon”/Sandra Wagner, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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August
(for Four August Jazz Babies)
August has few songs
no August Leaves
or August Can Really Hang You Up The Most
or It Might As Well Be August
though;
August is jazz essence
Its Harvest Moon
spills across the landscape
like a languorous
Lester Young ballad
on a warm cloudless night.
August is a mysterious traveler
that wanders its days
with thirty one questions
as mysterious as
a pair of Footprints
Wayne Shorter
discovered strung along
the shoreline,
when no one is near.
August cascades linking
swinging hard bop sunny days
and tumultuous modal winds
with hurricanes
at their thrashing peak
like a Jack DeJohnette
press roll
picking
up speed.
August reaches
across boundaries
as if Rahsaan Roland Kirk
was circular breathing,
blowing three horns at once,
a cadenza fusing
the humid
blue tradition
of july
with the unknown freedom
of September.
August has few songs
just the breath of babies
swinging and strong.
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Listen to Daniel Warren Brown read his poem
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Daniel Warren Brown has loved jazz (and music in general) ever since he delved into his parents’ 78 collection as a child. He is a retired special education teacher who began writing as a senior. He always appreciates being published in journals and anthologies. At age 72 he published his first collection Family Portraits in Verse and Other Illustrated Poems through Epigraph Books, Rhinebeck, NY. Daniel writes daily about music, art and whatever else catches his imagination.
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Listen to the 2016 recording of drummer Jack DeJohnette playing the Maurice White/Verdine White/Reginald Burke composition “Serpentine Fire,” with Ravi Coltrane (saxophone); and Matthew Garrison (bass). [Universal Music Group]
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Click here to read Terrance Underwood’s poem for September
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Readers can click to other poems within the 2026 jazz poetry calendar by clicking on the link to the months here:
Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr/May/Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep/Oct/Nov/Dec/Intro
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Click for:
More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician
“Where the Music Wasn’t Allowed,” Jane McCarthy’s winning story in the 71st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
More short fiction on Jerry Jazz Musician
Information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction
Subscribe to the (free) Jerry Jazz Musician quarterly newsletter
Helping to support the ongoing publication of Jerry Jazz Musician, and to keep it commercial-free (thank you!)
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Jerry Jazz Musician…human produced since 1999
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