Four poets, four poems…A quartet of jazz poetry

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swing = joy

…………………(for jym marks via charles lloyd)

mr swingboy
swing swing swing
a swingful noise
ode to swing
the swing luck club
swing to the world
swingful and triumphant
the swing of sex
the swing of cooking
my swing today knows
no bounds
no limit to my
swingfulness
swings eternally
infinity of swing
why anything
other than
swing?
no antonym
swing is
what all of this
is about
swing is
a much better
word
joy has an opposite in
sadness
swing doesn’t
so none of that here
because swing
alone
is

 

………………………………………….Published in Quadrant Magazine (Australia) 2013

 

by Ed Coletti

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I Like Jazz

I like jazz, no, love it!
Like to improvise, like changing chords,
Like turning errors to rewards;
Spontaneous and in-the-moment:
In and out.
So gratifying.

I like treating life like jazz;
Mistakes that colour
Brighten up an old worn theme;
Augment esteem
And in some way,
Too mesmerising to portray
In chords or words,
Humbly proffer sweetest curds
Of love.

I’m lucky.
I can play the stuff,
Playing ’round, say, off the cuff.
Where fears are fluff and disappear.
What could be better?

I might show up one day playing
With my nose
Or on my elbows.
Who knows
How far improvising goes?

As my life grows shorter,
As my jazz gets freer
All the waters of my melodies find power
That I never knew were there.

Who knows where these ideas come from?
When they come or how they come,
No end of gushing’s sum,
The hum of thinking factory and factor
A continuum of energy
To enhance my jazz and me.

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by Arlene Corwin

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Snapping Those Strings

The stars
don’t have
a chance
and that moon
up there
fat with cheese
smiling silver
and winking cold
holds not
a candle
to the man
and his guitar
pulling strings
thick like
Christmas bows
each note
popping up
like the sun
but that to
can’t hold
no heat
when those
picking fingers
snap into
fire
flaming alive
the song
from smoke
to blazing
burning jive
sweating the
foreheads and
hands with
the jazz
from that
man.

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by Roger Singer

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Renaissance Music

Spring again,
everything that blooms
slurs yellow-green powder
into the blue,
a Rhapsody In Blue
with its own
clarinet glissando,
a lick
that fills the air
with life so thick
it can almost be heard
as it drifts
from leaf to leaf,
higher and higher
toward a concordant cadence
that articulates
the profound colors to come
and a melody
that sings an ode
to summer.

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by Michael Keshigian

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Ed Coletti is a poet widely published internationally and he curates the popular blog “No Money In Poetry.” Additionally, Ed is a painter. middling chess player, and harmonica player. He lives with his wife Joyce in Santa Rosa, California.

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Arlene Corwin has been a jazz musician since 1951, and continues to work as a pianist/singer in Sweden, where she now resides. Her mother owned a jazz club with Slim Gaillard in Hempstead, Long Island called The Turf. She has published 17 books of poetry.

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Roger Singer is a prolific and accomplished contributing poet who we have proudly published for many years. Singer has had almost 800 poems published in magazines, periodicals and online journals — 400 of which are jazz poems — and has recently self-published a Kindle edition of his book of jazz poetry called Poetic Jazz.

“Jazz poetry flows out with such ease,” Singer writes on his blog. “The people and places, the alleys and sawdust jazz clubs. The stories that bring jazz alive with horns and voices, from sadness and grief to highs at midnight and love gone wrong. The jazz is within us all. Find your poem and feel the music.”

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Michael Keshigian’s eleventh poetry collection, Inexplicable was released in November, 2016 by Black Poppy Review. Other published books and chapbooks:Beyond,Dark Edges,Eagle’s Perch,Wildflowers,Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. Published in numerous national and international journals, he is a 6- time Pushcart Prize and 2-time Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle,Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. .Winter Moon, a poem set for Soprano and Piano, premiered in Boston.…(michaelkeshigian.com).

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