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The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes.
October 1st, 2023
. . photo by Bernard Gotfryd/Library of Congress/PDM 1.0 Thelonious Monk, 1968 . ___ . Thelonious Monk and Mama Thelonious Monk paints a picture of Mama with his piano, the way Monet or Matisse would, with paint: loud, bright colorful notes that are a Rorschach test, screaming on the page. Perhaps, Mama would’ve modeled … Continue reading ““Thelonious Monk and Mama” – a poem by Erren Kelly”
...September 30th, 2023
Earlier this year I invited poets to submit jazz-themed poetry that didn’t need to strictly follow the 5-7-5 syllabic structure of formal haiku, but had to at least be faithful to the spirit of it (i.e. no more than three lines, brief, expressive, emotionally insightful).
This collection, featuring 22 poets, is a good example of how much love, humor, sentimentality, reverence, joy and sorrow poets can fit into their haiku devoted to jazz.
...September 27th, 2023
When a marketing writer gets a new neighbor, she finds herself dreading the 2:00 practice sessions of The Musician. In Rear Window fashion, The Writer is kept apprised of The Musician’s life happenings through a combination of watching out the window and listening to the story told through her music. When a crisis entangles the two women, they form a bond that penetrates the wall that stands between them – despite never having met.
...September 26th, 2023
I’m whistling a tune about
a woman’s broken heart,
down a long and empty
hallway, just to hear it
move itself along,
September 24th, 2023
Barstow to Boron, bound for Bakersfield
we fly across the Mojave Desert, will wind
through and over the Tehachapis
only to come to rest in another desert
on the rim of the sink of California.
September 22nd, 2023
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. In this edition, the poet connects the recordings of Jessica Williams’ “Little Waltz” and Gene Harris’ “Summertime.”
...September 20th, 2023
From a third floor window I imagine
I can almost see the cracked black
& white tile welcoming Penn Avenue
to the long-closed Kappel’s Jewelers.
September 17th, 2023
Ella Fitzgerald is whispering
to me: “sit here and enjoy your dinner with my
sweet honey voice,” eternal bloom of time,
filling the corner of the street where I eat
with a Golden Age long gone but that remains
like an idea, lingering, like the steam of a
hot bath leaving
traces of fingers on the mirror
September 13th, 2023
A story revolving around a jazz record which means so much to a couple that they risk being discovered while attempting to escape the Soviet Union.
...September 12th, 2023
Strains of Charlie Parker’s alto sax fill
the empty apartment song-after-song –
“Dancing in the Dark,” “Loverman,”
“Embraceable You.”
Between every note I wish.
September 10th, 2023
Coltrane said a prayer to his musical God
Straight through the horn of his saxophone.
Not a metaphor; he spoke the words
Through the reed and the music into the air.
September 3rd, 2023
There are two types of clubs
Highfalutin hoity-toity stuck up clubs
And gritty grimy dingy dank dungeons
I prefer the latter, for obvious reasons
Clubs must be weathered
Crackled paint & nicotine stained
August 31st, 2023
Neil Young stumbled off the stage more exhausted than usual. It had been a trying gig, watching Danny Whitten teeter from chord to chord on a heroin-fueled high-wire act that just seemed to get more perilous as the night wore on. It was fine that Danny blew some chords—everyone blew chords in this band. That was what made Crazy Horse special in the first place. If Neil wanted every note pure and perfect, he could have stuck with Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But what would have been the point of that? It was like playing a benediction for your own immaculate coffin.
...August 30th, 2023
The shadow from the brick facade
of Central High School did not seem
to spread much shade on the streets
of our Little Rock neighborhood.
August 27th, 2023
This edition features poetry chosen from hundreds of recent submissions, and from a wide range of voices known – and unknown – to readers of these collections. The work is unified by the poets’ ability to capture the abundance of jazz music, and their experience with consuming it.
...August 22nd, 2023
once said I’d marry a man
Who could hum the first four bars
Of Cal Tjader’s “Doxy.”
We say these foolish things
When we’re young and
Still learning the ways of the world.
August 20th, 2023
n On the Road, Jack & Neal raced Rocky Mount to Ozone Park,
speeding dark quiet American roads
Today, 2023. I drive the new superhighways, continuous sterile green
at median & shoulders,
August 18th, 2023
A man once asked me about ambition, not in a typical sense of family and lifetime accomplishments, more of a rhetorical artistic conversation. To me, it wasn’t a topic which warranted a structured answer let alone a real plan, God forbid life would be linear and predictable. Now, over two decades later, I am found in Notting Hill’s Rooftop Cafe, writing a story which could possibly address the subject unintentionally.
...August 17th, 2023
Shrouded in smoke and cigarette spheres
Jazzy speakeasy on a summer slog of a night
Where hips ramble in tandem,
Slide and slip in an out of rhythm
Juke Joint shifting with an uneven floor
Naked feet shuffling and colliding
August 13th, 2023
Vivaldi, especially “The Four Seasons,”
keeps showing up in forms of jazz:
a hint, a structure—but try unraveling
any musical DNA you go straight back
to singing and to drum, voice and poetry—
August 10th, 2023
free
what
bars?
intra-
views,
posit-
ions
o-
pen.
August 6th, 2023
20-year-old Priscilla Habel lives with her wannabe flapper mother who remains stuck in the jazz age 40 years later. Life is monotonous and sad until Cil meets Willie Flasterstain, a beatnik lesbian who offers an escape from her mother’s ever-imposing shadow.
...August 4th, 2023
Smooth. Jazz. Chill.
Write. Think. Build.
Listen. Vibe. Poetically
design.
Spend time with jazzy
sounds elevating the
mind. Jazz is smooth.
Jazz is chill.
July 30th, 2023
Did you dream up the orange golden sun of Aruanda?
Seashells far from your mother, you would no longer need
to whisper, “Take Me to Aruanda.”
...July 27th, 2023
The poet covers the spirit of the music, and the likes of Coltrane, Handy, and Ella…
...July 24th, 2023
The light aspires to be equatorial
but each eroded moment quiets otherwise.
The twilight Superior shore fills
with pine smoke from fire pits
just as Coltrane played in the
smoldering light at the Village Vanguard.
July 23rd, 2023
. . Lester Young, 1946 . . Solace I relish the cultivation of my Lester afternoons an endeavor still absorbing at my age captive in that garden of ambient sound …………………that Young tenor breath ………………………….a zephyr expulsion stirring atmosphere rare these days for this climate caressing time & movement with a tone to stream still … Continue reading ““Solace” – a poem by Terrance Underwood”
...July 18th, 2023
During that electric dawn
when I first heard
a bracelet of notes
which traced a subtle rhythm
within an hourglass of music
and sharpened the silence with sound,
July 16th, 2023
It’s 1958
and the epitome of 50s style
Anita O’Day steps onto
the stage, white gloves
to her elbows, black hat
crowned with white feathers,
slim black dress and finger clicks
the band into sound and dynamic
jazz minors and majors.
July 14th, 2023
A fantasy involving a spider and Miles Davis’ recording of “All Blues”
...July 12th, 2023
in jazz composition
everybody knows where the one is
even when nobody chooses to play it
if the space is quiet enough
you can hear blood racing
July 11th, 2023
The story – a finalist in the F. Scott Fitzgerald 2022 Short Story Contest – follows a laid-off silent-era screenwriter’s career shift after she’s forced to pawn her typewriter.
...July 10th, 2023
It’s one of those moments.
She only has ears for Miles Davis.
Reflecting on things that never came to be—
July 9th, 2023
A violin player and enthusiast makes a crucial decision regarding where his violin will go next.
...July 6th, 2023
In anticipation of a collection of jazz haiku — to be published sometime in August, 2023 — a small sampling of the jazz haiku received so far is published here.
...July 5th, 2023
he was/
a flightless bird/
bright as sky/
full of natural lies/
and sweet conflict/
when speaking the/
jazz
July 2nd, 2023
The poet describes his joyful experience of listening to “Mumbles,” a 1964 recording by Oscar Peterson with Clark Terry
...June 28th, 2023
Naturally, his lyrics are cued a cappella./“I’m home” slips from his lips,/sizzles like the taste of what I’m baking in the oven,/as he unwinds his day.
...June 25th, 2023
Two poems devoted to Steely Dan’s 1977 recording of “Aja”
...June 22nd, 2023
Bennie and his mother live alone together, and know each other through simple but profound rituals they have created…
...June 20th, 2023
The poet Alan Yount and son Arlan write about a live 1964 performance by Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
...June 18th, 2023
The poet recalls an evening when he serendipitously encountered jazz in “The Point” neighborhood of Boston
...June 15th, 2023
All damn day/
talk — talk — talk/
I told him, son/
why not fit those fingers/
down that damn gullet/
and make it a proper/
squawk squawk squawk —/
June 11th, 2023
What if you love music…but you can no longer hear? Ms. Flock’s story contemplates the paralleled loss of the protagonist’s hearing and her husband, where music fits into her life now, and attempts to forge a new relationship being deaf.
...June 8th, 2023
Poets honor jazz as an international music in five atmospheric poems
...June 7th, 2023
The poet recalls a live performance he witnessed by the Timeless All Stars
...June 4th, 2023
This busy bee, at the end of a life like clockwork,
a symphony of service to everything but herself—
wings snatched in a world blinded by the way it is—
slowly expiring in the sweet nectar of stillness,
May 31st, 2023
When the water and sand dance, whence (whence?)/their music? What is that music? What /jazz, what syncopation surfs itself in?
...May 28th, 2023
. . “Guy Ryan,” a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . This story is a chapter from author’s book-in-progress, One For Sorrow. . . ___ . . photo by Lalesh Aldarwish/via Pexels … Continue reading ““Guy Ryan” – a short story by Alice Sherman Simpson”
...May 22nd, 2023
That feeling when everything makes you sad/Nothing you can think of would make you glad/No matter how hard you try to remove yourself/From this blue funk
...May 21st, 2023
A call-out for submissions for upcoming poetry collections to be published on Jerry Jazz Musician
...May 19th, 2023
The poet writes a profile of the jazz drummer Elvin Jones, inspired by a photograph by Lee Tanner
...May 18th, 2023
The poets Richard Radcliffe and Svi A. Sesling share their experience of listening to and interacting with to the music of John Coltrane
...May 18th, 2023
Nine poets, nine poems on the leading figure in the development of bebop…
...May 17th, 2023
The poet writes a fantasy about Parker’s time in the California asylum Camarillo…a 15 song playlist accompanies the poem
...May 16th, 2023
. . The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work. Ms. Baptiste reads her poem at its conclusion. . . ___ . . David Dellepiane, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons . . Jazz Within Me I like Jazz playing within me. ……………….Record that never skips. Since age sixteen, … Continue reading “The Sunday Poem: “Jazz Within Me” by Jerrice Baptiste”
...May 13th, 2023
A short story based on a recollection of the author’s mother from a night many years ago, when Gene Krupa’s sticks gave everything back its beat.
...May 13th, 2023
A woman’s fingers explored/piano keys, as though bairns/plowing through snow drifts/in search of hidden life;
...May 11th, 2023
An abstract poetic view of an abstract jazz recording…
...May 10th, 2023
A remembrance of incidents in the Bronx, Harlem and at Bop City…
...May 9th, 2023
The poet describes the clear, crisp sound of listening to jazz music on vinyl
...May 7th, 2023
Poet musings on Ellington — and big band music, by the poets Claire Andreani, Russell duPont, Laurinda Lind and Terrance Underwood
...May 4th, 2023
The poet remember jazz pianist Horace Tapscott
...May 2nd, 2023
A “jazz detective” uncovers a murder via a riddle involving a photo of Dizzy Gillespie
...May 1st, 2023
The poet recalls an encounter with Carmen McRae at a Hollywood shoe store
...April 30th, 2023
The poets share their love of jazz through personal narratives, and memories of live performances
...April 28th, 2023
A poem and an essay devoted to the legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery
...April 27th, 2023
. . “The Occasional Girl,” a short story by Mark Bruce, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 62nd Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author. . . ___ . . Photo: Kubat Sydykov / World Bank/CC By-NC-ND-2.0 . The Occasional Girl by Mark Bruce . … Continue reading ““The Occasional Girl” – a short story by Mark Bruce”
...April 24th, 2023
The poet writes about the depth of the trumpeter’s playing, and the connections to many of the great trumpeters before him
...April 23rd, 2023
Several poems devoted to the pianist Ahmad Jamal, who died on April 16, 2023 at the age of 92.
...April 21st, 2023
In five poems, the poet writes of the music and complexity of trumpeter Chet Baker
...April 20th, 2023
The poet writes about the significance of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”, and why it is the “it” jazz recording…
...April 18th, 2023
The poet describes the impact of pianist Ahmad Jamal on a cherished evening, and beyond
...April 17th, 2023
The poet reflects on loss, fate, remembrance, and hopefulness
...April 16th, 2023
This is the 14th extensive collection of jazz poetry published on Jerry Jazz Musician since the fall of 2019, when the concept was initiated. Like all previous volumes, the beauty of this edition is not solely evident in the general excellence of the published works; it also rests in the hearts of the individuals from diverse backgrounds who possess a mutual desire to reveal their life experiences and interactions with the music, its character, and its culture.
...April 13th, 2023
. . “Modus Dualis,” by Martel Chapman . . Riff ‘n’ Tiff There was no time signature to save Louis Armstrong from the shivery brine. Monk volunteered to heave his piano overboard to give the lifeboat more zest but it wouldn’t budge or stay in tune for that matter. Moisture had initiated a rift between … Continue reading ““Riff ‘n’ Tiff” – humor by Dig Wayne”
...April 12th, 2023
A nurse is on the verge of selling everything before heading to WWI France, where a woman she is in love with awaits her arrival, forcing her to come to terms with what that means.
...April 10th, 2023
The poet recalls her early-life friendship with the pianist/composer Dave Frishberg
...April 9th, 2023
The poet writes on how a musician putting their heart into their playing is a key to a great solo
...April 7th, 2023
The poet recalls Miles Davis’ depth of character and musicianship during a particularly complex era of his career
...April 6th, 2023
The poet writes about the impact Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “Star Spangled Banner” had on America
...April 3rd, 2023
This narrative poem is informed by quotes and stories in What Happened, Miss Simone? the 2015 Netflix biographical documentary about the singer/artist’s life and art
...April 2nd, 2023
A tale of two Michael Cohens — one is Trump’s former “fixer,” the other is an important voice in LGBTQ history
...March 29th, 2023
Thoughts of sadness and hope in the wake of the March 27, 2023 school shooting in Nashville
...March 28th, 2023
A young Parisian girl comes of age during the Nazi Occupation, a time when social and political upheaval create drastic consequences for her youthful naïveté.
...March 27th, 2023
The poet profiles the larger-than-life figure of the legendary jazz bassist Charles Mingus
...March 26th, 2023
The poet writes about the changing sound of jazz in the 1970s through the work of Wayne Shorter
...March 24th, 2023
The poets Amy Barone and Mark Fogarty share personal thoughts and memories of the bassist Jaco Pastorius
...March 21st, 2023
The poet writes of youthful memories conjured up from listening to Chick Corea and Return to Forever’s 1973 album, “Light as a Feather.”
...March 19th, 2023
Poetic narratives by six women experiencing the blues.
...March 16th, 2023
A saxophonist and his teenage daughter – a drummer –bond over their club performance of John Coltrane’s “Mr. P.C,” but it doesn’t come without its parental challenges, and the father’s warm remembrance of her childhood.
...March 13th, 2023
The poet writes about the origins of our personal blues, and how they can affect us…
...March 12th, 2023
In this edition, the poet writes about attending a McCoy Tyner performance (or “ceremony”), and hearing the musician’s one word philosophy of music.
...March 9th, 2023
The author writes about his hometown of Lubbock, Texas, and some of the musicians and events that made up that city’s thriving music scene during the mid-20th century
...March 8th, 2023
The poet writes of a dreamlike, mystical evening experience
...March 7th, 2023
The poet honors his friend, the late jazz pianist Janice Scroggins, and reads his poem while Ms. Scroggins accompanies him
...March 5th, 2023
A poem honoring the greatness of the saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter, who died today at the age of 89
...March 2nd, 2023
The poet reflects on winter, its moon, and the playing of saxophonist Art Pepper
...March 2nd, 2023
The poet is inspired by John Coltrane’s 1961 recording, “Ole”
...February 26th, 2023
The author describes the emotional experience of listening to the music of Nina Simone
...February 24th, 2023
The poet is inspired by the 1956 recording of “St. Thomas,” by Sonny Rollins
...February 23rd, 2023
In this short listed entry from the 61st Short Fiction Contest, a man’s eating habits alter along with the cycles of his love life.
...February 20th, 2023
The poet suggests better music could have accompanied the final scene in the film “Casablanca”
...February 19th, 2023
The poet’s humorous look at the importance of musicians showing up, and on time, for their performance!
...February 16th, 2023
A brief history of Rodgers and Hart’s composition “My Funny Valentine,” and a poem by George Held, who reflects on the song
...February 14th, 2023
The poet recalls the impact of Chet Baker’s music on her late, earlier life friend
...February 12th, 2023
The poet tells the complex and tragic story of jazz pianist Bud Powell
...February 9th, 2023
A minor regional writer walks into a hometown bar and confronts his past – and present – when he encounters an old classmate
...February 6th, 2023
Meanwhile, digging
the scene
a sultry
walking hip-step
bop that
fell to the
sweetest
moody!
...February 5th, 2023
A sampling of recent submissions from six poets who, until now, have not had their work published on Jerry Jazz Musician
...February 2nd, 2023
first light skims on green wing like sprouts strobing for ray
...January 29th, 2023
A collection in which over 30 poets communicate their appreciation for jazz music in poems no longer than seven lines.
...January 27th, 2023
The poet writes of the blues of Billie Holiday…
...January 25th, 2023
A wealthy art dealer discovers that his grandfather purchased art confiscated from Jewish families before and after World War II, and meets an elderly woman who was affected by the grandfather’s actions.
...January 24th, 2023
The poet writes about the complexity of pianist Cecil Taylor’s music, and the liberation he feels from listening to it
...January 22nd, 2023
The poet writes of how the desire for love can be distilled into one golden wail of a Billy Strayhorn declaration.
...January 20th, 2023
Picasso paints a portrait based on what he sees in his model’s soul, much to the ego-centric subject’s chagrin
...January 18th, 2023
“Blow by Blow” is a portrait of Berkeley, California in the 1970’s, and the fusion jazz that was finding its way onto the scene at that time.
...January 17th, 2023
The poet imagines being a monarch butterfly, inspired to movement by the music of Django Reinhardt
...January 15th, 2023
A bluesman finds that his girlfriend is making him too happy. So he fobs her off on a no-talent rival, with unpredictable results.
...January 13th, 2023
The poet uses the winter snow for inspiration and self-reflection
...January 12th, 2023
The poet shares a memory of the jazz pianist Carla Bley
...January 8th, 2023
The author considers John Coltrane’s intensity and tenderness, and how these two qualities intertwine in his improvisations.
...January 6th, 2023
Four poets share their appreciation for jazz in poems seven lines or fewer
...January 5th, 2023
A young man finds solace in his late fathers’ guitar and finds a new way to live through the blues and a life on the road.
...January 3rd, 2023
The poet reveres the power and beauty and historical significance of Black women, and reads his poem
...January 1st, 2023
The poet brings in the new year, with the virtuoso sounds of pianist Art Tatum
...December 30th, 2022
Every day should be Kwanzaa, you ask me,
given our shared African heritage,
December 26th, 2022
The poet writes of a flute and London at Christmas time
...December 24th, 2022
The poet writes of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s hit song, and offers an 18 song version playlist
...December 21st, 2022
“Footsteps of Spring” was a short-listed entry in the 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 20th, 2022
.This collection of jazz poetry – the largest yet assembled on Jerry Jazz Musician – demonstrates how poets who are also listeners of jazz music experience and interact with the spontaneous art that arises from jazz improvisation, which often shows up in the soul and rhythm of their poetic language.
...December 16th, 2022
“The Weeping Tree” arises from the poet listening to (and watching) Sinne Eeg & Thomas Fonnesbæk perform “Willow Weep For Me”
...December 13th, 2022
Chuck Sweetman and Patricia Carragon write two very different poems, both inspired by Frank Sinatra
...December 9th, 2022
Mr. Robbins’ story was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 61st Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest
...December 7th, 2022
The poet writes of a visitor to his listening of Louis Armstrong’s “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue”
...December 4th, 2022
The poet celebrates the sights and sounds of the New Orleans French Quarter
...December 2nd, 2022
The poets D.H. Jenkins and Stephen Bett on the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny
...November 28th, 2022
Salsa musicians Tony Martinez and Sal Rodriguez are determined to get paid by Billy Barata, their notoriously dishonest bandleader.
...November 21st, 2022
The fierce resistance…to Revelation! Disordered
listeners. The forest clearing in the thicket… The
Universe expanding on the Theme… The
Future finally right
now?
November 20th, 2022
In the winter of 1981 we were hired to play Downtown—
a performance in Greenwich Village billed “Frank Zappa Presents:
a Musical Tribute to Edgard Varèse.” I sat on stage,
wearing black, tuning my violin, warming up,
looking out at the audience milling around, most of them
covered in tattoos and piercings of every body part
November 14th, 2022
A poem about what’s at stake in the Nov 8 2022 midterm election
...November 8th, 2022
The winner of the the 61st edition of the Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest is a story of reflection on a coming-of-age mentorship, gone awry.
...November 7th, 2022
They are gathering now
all along the shoreline.
Their bones sing October!
Their wings cry out Go south!
I walk with my banjo
down to the water’s edge.
What can I play for geese
who carry their own tunes
November 4th, 2022
News concerning a new collection of jazz poetry by Michael L. Newell
...November 3rd, 2022
Musicians
make conversation
around the notes
warm up before leaving terra firma,
say goodbye to familiar places.
Soar.
October 28th, 2022
“Fire From Heaven” arises from the poet Douglas Cole listening to John Coltrane’s 1964 album A Love Supreme
...October 24th, 2022
That inner sense of freedom,
a natural balance
with an impulse
to preserve the day,
as the equinox
tilts from a window
with a view of leaves on fire.
October 18th, 2022
In five separate poems, poets write of Robert Johnson, Beethoven, Ornette Coleman, Duke Fakir and The Band
...October 10th, 2022
Old photos link the narrator to his mother’s love and strength, and thanks her while humming Billie Holiday’s “All the Way”
...October 4th, 2022
The poet honors the late Pharoah Sanders
...September 30th, 2022
Mr. Donnelly’s “The Sweatshop” is a memoir about about his time working in a music accessory sweatshop by day, and slogging it out on the club circuit by night…
...September 29th, 2022
Jazz and poetry…Mingling Yeats, Dylan Thomas and Coleman Hawkins — and communicating a lifelong passion for music
...September 26th, 2022
I was there to see The Trio:
Ramsey Lewis, Eldee Young,
Red Holt. The darkened space
lived up to its name. It felt edgy,
sophisticated, high voltage.
September 21st, 2022
Cool, cool, ineffably cool,
his trumpet grieves with
a restraint barely able to be
embraced by listeners, his music
is pain on ice, whiskey frozen
September 13th, 2022
As if the stars contained wood ticks
on fire. As if there were forests within
forests. Trees within stones. Stones
folded over into water.
The most secret nocturnal animals
walk around during the day, unseen.
September 11th, 2022
You listen to Karrin Allyson sing “Blame It on My Youth,” you picture her in the throes of its May-December scenario. You picture her on a college campus. Columbia University, the steps in front of Low, a pleated skirt, a short bob, the full flush of love on her cheeks.
...September 7th, 2022
My friend and I are talking indignant politics
as we head across the Mid-Hudson bridge,
steel sky above, chilly water below,
when a cloud of birds twists, spins above us.
They seek every bare branch, fill them
as if they were summer leaves, then scatter
again like confetti in wind. No one is in charge,
yet balance animates all.
September 5th, 2022
It’s
sittin’ in the corner knowing what others don’t get and smile-noddin’ over scotch and coda after a day bounced you about like Buddy’s snare and high hat clamped you down to sweet Georgia brown dirt in the Summertime wailed by Sidney Bechet
August 31st, 2022
A former contemporary dancer struggles to find her place in both the world and her own body after leaving her discipline behind for a career in software development.
...August 29th, 2022
Forgotten poems fly here and there
like birds that circle aimlessly
high in the thin and chilly air
till, willy-nilly, they come down
August 28th, 2022
“The Ghost Note” arises from the poet listening to “From Paris With Love” from Melody Gardot’s 2020 album Sunset in the Blue
...August 23rd, 2022
Through your horn’s dark pieties,
the glamor of its golden mouth, a youth
lost to the call and response of too many needle-nights,
too many dumps, too many dives,
you play a mudwater music, slow-flowing under an old iron bridge,
so sad, so far gone, it wings away never to come back.
August 18th, 2022
A woman stands up for her ex-boyfriend when her new lover disparages music by Art Tatum, a favorite artist of his.
...August 16th, 2022
A broad collection of jazz poetry authored by an impressive assemblage of regular contributors and established poets new to this publication – all of whom open their imagination and hearts to the abundant creative experience they derive from this art.
...August 14th, 2022
I rise, change the sheets on the bed
that used to be in Mother’s basement.
I step into her body or she into mine,
attempt to line the blanket and spread
evenly, to tuck in the ends the “military”
square-corner-way and then, I remember
Mother doing chores to jazz, blues
August 12th, 2022
Was it something she said? about
the famous Charlie Parker drawers
He — himself a drawer —
illustrator, declaimer of conclusions —
commenced to rapping
about terrorists
on LA flight
demanding underwear
August 8th, 2022
The poet’s tender remembrance of his father’s passion for the clarinet
...August 5th, 2022
My mother used to take me here. It’s different in the dark; the metal frames lurk like gallows and the railings remind me of prison bars. I don’t remember her pushing me in the bucket seat, but I believe she did. I do remember the big girls’ swing: hours and hours we spent. She took the seat beside me; we leant and pulled together, stretched pointed toes, forwards and backwards, rising and falling, higher and higher, hands gripped on chains and our bottoms lifting as we peaked. I pick at the paint on a rusted spear and nick my finger. Blood trickles onto my palm. I lick it off and the taste is metallic, as if my flesh is made from city. Perhaps the city took over, where my mother left off.
...August 4th, 2022
Through the art of meditation,
I become transfixed—transported
to the days of Baldwin & Joplin,
the Black Renaissance of Harlem— the resurrection
of a muse, Langston Hughes,
...August 2nd, 2022
bass
piano
blues
low
down
blues
and higher now
12 bar blues
right now
cliché
like
“a little bit a soda”
but not.
July 27th, 2022
My country, right or wrong
I call it home, the land my forefathers
Help built, but got little credit
July 23rd, 2022
Give the man a toothpick,
he is dying!
Perhaps his teeth need cleaning,
Sweet starchy deposits of his life trapped
and pleading for rescue
from the dying body
July 18th, 2022
A neo-noir story of a young singer snuffed out by the music business early in her career, either by chance or malice…
...July 15th, 2022
He’s a-stagger the patrilineous
hillside grove wonder tunnels
street black ribbons going bower-deep
with sunlight glitter punctuations
feeling the great payoff on the way
July 11th, 2022
When I hear Sketches of Spain or Kind of Blue – Miles Davis masterpieces from his earlier career – I am always calmed, thrilled by the ways that music can take over every portion of a person from head to toe, from inside to outside, from innermost mind to outermost layer of skin.
...July 6th, 2022
. . Distributed by Joe Glaser’s Associated Booking Corporation. Photographer uncredited and unknown., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Chet Baker, 1955 . . Always Cool Alison weaves on her loom in the living room. Fifth floor walk up. Manhattan. Chet plays on the stereo; a trumpet divinely graced, caressed like a stunning woman’s body, soft … Continue reading ““Always Cool” — a poem by Judith Vaughn”
...June 29th, 2022
The Club is almost ready to open.
It’s clean, the bar stocked, piano
polished and the crowd is lined
up down the street.
June 19th, 2022
Throughout the day, the sky has bled
boatloads of water to drown the streets,
a level of grief I have not known
since the day the e-mail arrived
with the heading, “Landing gear down,”
a note from a brother informing me
of my father’s passing in Oregon
June 19th, 2022
The poet writes about the 1956 collaboration of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
...June 17th, 2022
The poet reflects on a childhood of the 1960s
...June 12th, 2022
The poet recalls a special night on the town, listening to Les Paul
...June 4th, 2022
When in spring/Miles’s horn awakens/The nodding giant of the streets…
...June 2nd, 2022
The poet reveres the jazz drummer and musical mentor to many, Art Blakey
...May 31st, 2022
The poem “Convergence” rises from listening to the 1960 album, “Stan Getz Quartet at Large”
...May 28th, 2022
A selection of poems from Michael L. Newell’s new collection of poetry, Still the World Beckons: New and Selected Poems (cyberwit.net)
...May 25th, 2022
The wind sandpapered John’s cheeks the instant he opened the swing door. By the time he’d stepped down from Bill’s Billiards into the street he was shivering.
He hadn’t been good on stage: every second tune had reminded him of Riley, the turd.
There was no traffic and even the pizza place had closed, and he missed its earlier smells of warm mozzarella and meat. The chill air did, however, carry the hint of something, a snatch of melody from a passing car or a distant open window, and he listened, seeking its source.
...May 19th, 2022
Two poets reflect on the May 14, 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York
...May 16th, 2022
The poet writes of the collaboration of Ellington, Roach and Mingus on the 1962 album “Money Jungle”
...May 13th, 2022
first light skims on green wing
like sprouts strobing for ray
climbs from soils of night,
through damask-leafed curtain
a gateless gate, come home
from crescendo of star-gazing
to dew of earth shiver
May 5th, 2022
A story of a young man working in a music store who is asked to record the ramblings of a deranged customer. He agrees, but comes to regret his decision.
...May 2nd, 2022
Tall girl walks around
With a violin worn
Across her back
Her red hair carries
The fire of spring
April 30th, 2022
Mamacita with round brown hips roll and sway sway and roll slow that stroll
...April 27th, 2022
While we were waiting in the wings____
tuning our instruments,
From clefs to choruses, ominous portents
reared their ugly heads.
We didn’t see them, though.
We were cowering in dark corners,
hiding from the apparition
screaming through the night.
April 23rd, 2022
The voice comes down from the bedroom, winding down the stairs, crankily.
It does not at once compel in the manner of one of my “favorite singers” on the radio. I am a person, to use the word loosely, who does not own record albums, or a record player. What I hear from upstairs at her house, wailing down from the steps in that unassimilable voice, is the whine of the prairie. A rusty gate. A barroom complaint…
April 18th, 2022
Mr. Cole’s suite consists of eight poems, all interpretations from songs on pianist Tommy Flanagan’s album Sunset and the Mockingbird Suite
...April 14th, 2022
Over 60 poets from all over the world celebrate their love of jazz…in poetry.
...April 7th, 2022
From a dark corner, night crawls across a wood-board floor
warped from a life beneath boots and spilled beer.
Her music is a moan, a collection of sorrows,
lost love, broken hearts, and illegal dreams.
April 7th, 2022
A story about two American musicians in Paris for the summer–both of whom are on the brink of a breakdown.
...April 4th, 2022
Inspired by the essays collected in the jazz and cultural critic Nat Hentoff’s 2010 book At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene, in this series of poems Sean Howard uncovers new relationships and resonances in the author’s writing – reusing, recycling, and remixing text from the book as poetry – while allowing him the opportunity to pay a personal tribute to a writer he reveres.
...March 29th, 2022
The earth has got a fever of 103, and I’ve
found Langston Hughes languishing
on the sidewalks of NYC.
Piano keys were dancing in the wind;
Thelonious Monk was bluer than blue,
his slouch hat rolling to Timbuktu.
March 24th, 2022
. . “Opus One,” a story by Amadea Tanner, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 59th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author . . ___ . . photo by Gordon Parks/Library of Congress . Opus One By Amadea Tanner . …..The Dempsey Quintet pulsed eight to … Continue reading ““Opus One” — a short story by Amadea Tanner”
...March 22nd, 2022
a trumpet cries over orchestral waves
trumpet mourns like a wounded beast
trumpet demands attention
orchestra swells trumpet riding its waves
silence then trumpet reappears softly in distance
March 17th, 2022
It’s the darkness, man, the
Darkness
that laughs with the evil of the vamp.
It’s the wildness, man, the
Wildness
that greets the gray of dawn.
March 15th, 2022
We hear it from the street corner
as someone’s fingers begin to
pray the tune on the alto sax.
…..Let our rejoicing rise
…..High as the listening skies…
March 10th, 2022
Gail’s days on the bandstand are behind her now, London nights swapped for the life of a farmer’s wife back in Devon. But if an intriguing young man with a love of Billy Strayhorn wants sax lessons, who is she to deny him the chance to experience what she has given up?
...March 7th, 2022
The poet Erren Kelly honors the voting and women’s rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer
...March 4th, 2022
Gene Hyde’s poem connects nature and the moon to the music of John Coltrane
...March 1st, 2022
Set forth beautiful one
open sea and open sky
as far as your eye can see
full wind filling the sails
pushing those hesitant steps
three at a time before
the cymbal crash of wave
February 25th, 2022
Now when I start telling you about John Jones Sr., I don’t want you to go and get the wrong idea on me. And I don’t want anyone else to hear about it because I’ll deny it sure as I blow hella on this old harp. There are things that he knows about me that only your Pop can know. For that I got to love him. Even though times are when he gives it to me good.
...February 22nd, 2022
do you hear the wind?
see that scarlet leaf
dance on concrete?
I am that wind
I am that leaf
I am that dance
February 17th, 2022
hands do talk
to me they do
& after shaking his
some years back
clasping those long digits
expecting ivory key smoothness
I was stopped short by
their cement block
& long handle roughness
February 12th, 2022
They stretch octaves
across the sheet music
and the decades
of “Charleston Rag”
fingers like twisted bent tree trunks–
remembered rivers of antiquity
flowing through his veins–
February 8th, 2022
Tonight, I am alone,
lost in a dream,
and the dulcet tones
of Grappelli’s violin
glide lazily across
the twilight of my mind,
February 1st, 2022
It was a summer of jazz leaking out through shuttered windows; of breaking glass and rage from the anonymous facades of brick apartments; of winged girls trying to fly from atop the Cathedral of St. Louis; of women trying to take back the night from jugglers and mimes and the men who lurked and looked too long. And through all of this, we walked hand in hand, visitors from a planet where soybean fields bookmarked the horizon and the sweet smell of corn danced across the dusk.
...January 31st, 2022
A concert for lovers
Romantic space
For an eternal memory.
Well-dressed musicians
Well decorated scene.
.
Each note inspires exact words
To win Ghislaine’s heart,
The beauty of my youth.
January 29th, 2022
Remember when
the music saved
your life?
It’s different now.
Snow chills and hope,
like the rhythm section,
is subdued.
January 24th, 2022
Horace Silver’s got a grove. Just listen to that left hand,
like a heart skipping a beat or jumping up to a double-beat,
like beholding something so beautiful you can hardly believe it.
January 19th, 2022
Dressed in a tight-fitting black suit, Rosario Cino, flanked by his son Mario and his nephew Charlie, also in black suits, exited the cool of All Souls Church and stepped into a rank wall of unseasonably warm and humid air. They and a handful of friends and relatives had just sat through the funeral of Guido Tutolo, a former bookie, loan shark, and paisan—and last of the old gang, as Rosario had said repeatedly to his son and nephew, neither of whom seemed torn up about the death, their connection to Guido limited, their youthfulness of course looking forward.
...January 18th, 2022
wind whispers song of grief
its version of
Ben Webster’s sorrowful solos
January 12th, 2022
So long ago, before Ornette Coleman,
Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane—
all those free spirits running up and down
the alphabet of jazz, there was old
J.S. Bach, running through the changes.
I always picture him, and hear him,
at the pipe organ in Tomas Kirsche
all by himself,
January 7th, 2022
A 34-year old childless bachelor reluctantly agrees to babysit the nine-year old daughter of a friend of his on a Saturday night in September. The experience leads to a life-changing revelation.
...January 3rd, 2022
Between the notes
lies the silenced passion and pain
of a people
too enormous for lyric expression
though the black dots on the page
attempt to decode the encrypted message.
January 1st, 2022
In the cold vastness of space without end,
we swirl through time, around the sun,
alone, unknown, unknowable, lonely
collections of stardust, certain we matter,
but vague as to why and how, unable
to prove our value, yet convinced we must
December 23rd, 2021
The woodshed was the hunting ground for wings of notes.
Black suits and ties, hipster hats and smoke rings of notes.
Was Robert Johnson alone, hellhound on his trail?
Was a deal made? Was Bird Satan’s plaything of notes?
December 21st, 2021
In a modern literary retelling of The Little Mermaid, Pearl, a talented singer, leaves her tiny seaside town to enter the music business. She must let go of everything she thought she wanted to discover her true worth.
...December 20th, 2021
Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film. This poem is written to the 1957 Coleman Hawkins recording of “Juicy Fruit.”
...December 17th, 2021
I live inside Erik Satie’s piano
with my dog.
Every day is early morning autumn here
The leaves never fall
inside Erik Satie’s piano – they dance
December 14th, 2021
Molly Larson Cook’s abstract-expressionist paintings accompany the 50 poets contributing to this collection. Her art has much in common with the poetry and music found within it; all three art forms can be described as “landscapes of the imagination,” created by artists from all over the world who are inspired in a meaningful way by jazz music, and whose work can be uniquely interpreted and appreciated (or not!) by those who consume it.
...December 10th, 2021
It was probably Dean who was responsible for him being where he was right now, he thought as he sat across the table from his fiancée listening to her talk about the wedding and the gifts they were registered for and the reception. He had discovered an album he didn’t approve of – Barbra Streisand – among Dean’s records when he went to stay with him shortly after he got married to a woman from Cleveland.
...December 9th, 2021
One of my greatest joys for decades
was exploring unknown record shops.
I once walked into a newly opened used
shop around the corner from my university
and discovered a used album, apparently
the improvisatory result of a session
set up by Norman Granz that included
December 8th, 2021
I never did read the news, though I don’t suppose
it made a splash in the Post or Herald Tribune–
with maybe just a line or two
among the baseball stats, divorces,
and the marches picking up
deep down in the Cotton States.
December 3rd, 2021
I sit on a balcony,
a cup of coffee held for warmth
on a chill spring morning,
as waxwings and vireos flit and flash,
percolating with song.
November 26th, 2021
“What I have to say now stays between us.”
The Chairman’s face flushed a little. I sensed one of his rants was coming, and I was not disappointed:
“In my opinion, Jakub Hoch is a pseudo-liberal loudmouth of minimal talent who has no place as Musical Director of this orchestra.”
...November 23rd, 2021
I had a little radio up on top of the refrigerator, and I turned it on as the sunlight went and the world filled up with darkness. I listened to a jazz station and smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window.
...November 18th, 2021
the
horns
blow
melodies
seduce
hairs
on the
back
of
necks
November 14th, 2021
You Supremes in your long black robes
are at it again, sitting as though on Olympus, while we
soulfully wait to hear if you’re in tune with our needs.
We know You Can’t Hurry Love, but
we’re anxious to see your next decree.
...November 9th, 2021
Three times a year, we award a writer who submits, in our opinion, the best original, previously unpublished work. Emily Jon Tobias of Dana Point, California is the winner of the 58th Jerry Jazz Musician New Short Fiction Award. In “Mouth Organ,” Monk is a young musician who comes of age within his family domain, first by falling in love with girlfriend Gloria, and then having to face an unreconciled past with his mother, Bunny.
...November 8th, 2021
Julie London purrs.
Smooth, sultry, classy, sexy.
Temperatures rise.
November 5th, 2021
Wind sweeps through screen into living room;
papers dance across desk and floor;
an old woman’s hair floats,
a tattered flag of silver and gray;
November 2nd, 2021
On my walks alone lately I fantasize
that I’ll come across a woman my age
give or take a few years.
She’ll be listening to Miles, or Monk,
or Horace Silver, and reading
one of my poetry books.
October 29th, 2021
if i could
i’d ride the trains
again
just to make it all go
away
like that phone call i
got that evening
from sis
or that last conversation
we had
October 15th, 2021
The jazz DJ you listened to each morning
Is broadcasting from another sphere.
Perhaps you and Phil are parsing
Charlie Parker together.
His nasal voiced juicy lisp that spilled
details of Parker, Lester Young, and Coltrane,
no longer flies the airwaves in Birdflight.
October 12th, 2021
Having invented jazz, Buddy Bolden
Tried to imagine what else he’d invent,
Maybe the light bulb or dry cereal,
A cure for syphilis or dementia
Praecox, something he was familiar
With, but he stuck with jazz, American
And quintessential as coffee with milk
...October 3rd, 2021
Maebelle had been surprised when, in 1934, a scout for the American Record Corporation invited her to come and sing at the General Store, “for our field recordings.”
“Field recordings?” she’d joked. “They wanna hear the Boll Weevil, close up?” She was recalling the Charley Patton song.
...September 29th, 2021
Ferlinghetti at 101 took the cosmic bus home
this week. A life abundant, blessed with
art, poetry, creativity, and a lot of fun.
RingMaster for the poetry revolution,
Mr. San Francisco Big Daddy!
City Lights! The Mecca of hip!
September 28th, 2021
Dear Miss Ella, song supreme,
Improvisations sovereign –
I, swayed and moved by.
She, both modest, shy
Yet spoke of love (and what’s above),
Deserving place in poetry
Centered around her artistry –
The art of spontaneity;
A musicality called jazz!
September 21st, 2021
It’s never easy to say goodbye, especially when you didn’t get there in time. Dad was hours away from me and I didn’t have a car and it was the middle of the night when I got word. Words. Sung off-key.
...September 18th, 2021
a strange caribbean woman
kneeled down
very close to me,
in my hospital recovery bed.
she seemed very animated
also even sensory
she gradually came closer
as she put her face next to mine.
September 16th, 2021
Dim dusk breaks down
the receding light and one after another
strands of the passing hour unravel
leaving behind an existence beyond time
that opens the doors to another world:
It’s late in the evening in a foreign metropolis
September 10th, 2021
High overhead (turned turned and turned
again) a bird defines wind currents.
Branches crackle wildly gesticulate
a confusion of gusts.
With grace and ease a student
navigates school rapids until
September 5th, 2021
. . “Catbelly Heat On My Knees,” a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin, was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 57th Short Fiction Contest. It is published with the permission of the author. . . photo via hippopx/CC0 1.0 Universal . Catbelly Heat on My Knees by Ewing Eugene Baldwin . ___ . … Continue reading ““Catbelly Heat on My Knees” — a story by Ewing Eugene Baldwin”
...September 3rd, 2021
Missa brevis —a little requiem. At most I know
perhaps forty Latin words and have already used up
four of them. Maybe not too bad for a Jew boy.
And besides, editors of poetry are always carping:
Keep it short.
August 23rd, 2021
One of the best things about my life is that in the course of it I had the chance to see the great Blind Lemon Jefferson on eleven different occasions. This was especially gratifying because for me he was the finest blues singer who ever lived, even better than Robert Johnson or Charlie Patton or Bessie Smith.
...August 21st, 2021
“It’s not exclusive, but inclusive, which is the whole spirit of jazz.”
-Herbie Hancock
.
And…this spirit is not limited to the musicians, because celebrating jazz is rich in creative opportunity for writers and visual artists as well. The 54 poets who contribute to this poetry collection are living proof of that.
As always, thanks to the poets, and I hope you enjoy…
Joe
...August 19th, 2021
Almost sixty years
have passed yet
it could be today
she sings murder
oppression
protest in the streets
school children
sitting in jail
August 9th, 2021
