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Dear Readers:
The passing of the legendary giant of the tenor saxophone Sonny Rollins this week at the age of 95 is significant to those who love jazz music, cherish freedom, and admire those who live their lives with dignity, and with purpose.
Over the years I have published many poems written in reverence of the man we refer to simply as “Sonny.” In the wake of his death, many more have been written. This collection of unsolicited poems is an example.
As always, thanks to the poets, and I hope you enjoy.
Joe Maita
Editor/Publisher
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Yves Moch, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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On The Passing of The Last of Art Kane’s Angels
A beginning
Walter Theodore Rollins Incomparable!
He took me on many journeys
from the outer regions of Glocca Morra,
to the inner sanctums of St Thomas
Nigeria both backwards
and forwards. We spent
afternoons in Paris. Spread oleo.
Marveled at the height of the moon.
Expressed astonishment from tenor madness
(along with many others). Shared reveries.
Crossed a bridge
sometimes without a song.
Invited me into the house he lives in.
Admired a wild rose
softly as in a morning sunrise.
And these… only just a few.
Sonny may have left in body
on his way to other starlight venues
awaiting his powerful tenor improvisation
his evolving rhythmic sensibility.
But his soul remains behind eternal
as much a part of this rugged planet
as the sight of metropolitan architecture
or the structured nature of wild terrain.
After these lines I find I am in a sentimental mood.
I play his Stockholm trio “There Will Never Be Another You”.
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by Terrance Underwood
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For Sonny Rollins, In Memoriam, 1930 – 2026
A melody i hear
Buzzes in my ears
It follows me
To Revere Beach
I try to make it out
But it’s out
Of reach
And so, I make another bet
Maybe it’s a woman’s silhouette?
But it always leaves a smile
And I hear its song for Miles
A shape of dreams, leading me
Home,
Lovely as a saxophone
She is the song you played best
From Harlem to St. Kitts
How I lose myself in reverie
Of what your song means to me
How I benefitted from your knowledge
Of that song you played on the bridge
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by Erren Kelly
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The Williamsburg Bridge
……………..(for Sonny Rollins)
During the early days of autumn
our windows stayed open trying to
remember those last days of summer.
Music was coming from
the bridge. Jazz I thought it was
or a saxophone dancing with itself.
My friends told me it was Sonny
from the nightclub in Greenwich
Village. Sonny was playing
something he had once recorded.
The wind kept circling over his
head as his fingers kept fishing
for a different sound.
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by E. Ethelbert Miller
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Force of Nature
…..for Sonny
I read the news today
oh Sonny Boy!
though you were never a ‘boy’
and ‘Sonny’ never had enough gravitas
but then Theodore ‘Force of Nature’ Rollins
would have been a tad cumbersome
even for a Colossus
you were famous for your musical
retreats, your time playing
on the Williamsburg Bridge
Sonny, you WERE a bridge
from Hawk and Bird and Lester
to a new modernism
you were one of the survivors, Sonny,
like your fellow sax men
Trane and Jackie Mac and
Jimmy Heath
heroes of the heroin plague
you spent the rest of your long life
on a much higher plane
than any chemical could
ever have lifted you
you called Lester “A God!”
and you were too
you had other words for Lester, too,
three little ones
that showed you were his musical equal
you were dead serious
about your music,
about being spontaneous,
but dead humorous too
who else could have pulled off,
with a straight face no less,
“I’m an Old Cowhand” or
“The Most Beautiful Girl in the World?”
you found beauty in tunes
where no one else looked:
“Count Your Blessings,”
and “Sweet Leilani”
to name just two
we counted you as
one of our blessings
you spent time in such far-flung locales
as Glocca Morra and St Thomas
and always brought the world to us
meant the world to us
you went way out west
and way out east
and in your all-encompassing orbit
the twain did meet
you played sweetly for freedom
and always strode proudly for it
I was beginning to think
“If Ever I Would Leave You”
simply didn’t apply,
that you were immortal
you were a master of stop-time
but time never stopped for you
until today, that is,
May 25, 2026
when at 95 God said
okay, Sonny,
time for the big Pent-Up House
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by Bob Hecht
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Saxophone Colossus
…R.I.P. Sonny Rollins (1930-2026)
You don’t know what love is
croons Sonny Rollins caressing
his mellow tenor sax as he narrates
a bibliography of love and loss
We sail with him to Caribbean seas
Waves of music ease in and out
St. Thomas is a gateway home
Steel drums a rhythmic backdrop
Blue 7 lasts eleven minutes
or a lifetime if you’re lucky
Max Roach calls everybody to get up
to explain how we forgot about joy
Mack the Knife shows up
in Moritat. Watch your back
he warns Danger lurks everywhere.
Only music can save our souls.
Strode Rode is another Rollins
genius opus – swing bop backbeat
Roach explodes recedes spins purrs
Rollins curves.. swerves ..stirs everything up
The album was recorded in
Van Gelder’s Hackensack
studio. Tommy Flanagan’s piano
shines like a rainy morning sunrise.
Doug Watkins’ bass rounds out
the line-up. In 1956, no one knew
yet how far these Supernovas would go
but once you heard them you knew
you were hearing history’s mysteries
Jazz would never be the same
Rollins balanced the future of the universe
in his hands.. near his heart
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by Mary K O’Melveny
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Leave the Ordinary
The Colossus is dead.
A dominant voice in the field
of Jazz has been stilled.
Sonny Rollins died Monday.
He spent most of his 95 years
breathing life into a saxophone.
And what came out of that
hunk of brass moved me to tears.
As talented as he was, he twice
took years off to work on that
voice, practicing his art around
midnight under the Williamsburg
Bridge on the Lower East Side.
There is already a movement afoot
to dump Williamsburg into the East
River and rename this jazz infused
structure, The Sonny Rollins Bridge.
I was fortunate to have witnessed
Sonny’s virtuosity when he played
at Zellerbach Auditorium in 2008.
He began the concert by playing
his version of a jazz standard,
followed by each member of the
band improvising on what they
had just heard.
When the music came back around
to Sonny, he incorporated every
musician’s solo into a new Rollins’
riff. By the end, they were all
shaking their heads in disbelief..
Musicians worshiped Sonny. I have
seen headliners at jazz festivals
abandon backstage dressing rooms
to get to where they could witness
him performing.
As jazz critic Phil Elwood once
said, “That’s why they call him
‘The Man’.”
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by Steve Trenam
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Sonny Rollins Views The Stars
Stepping on his porch
under an open sky
Sonny gazed at the stars
through the pine trees
and the Catskill Mountains
across the Hudson River.
He walked to his studio
and practiced, the notes
flew around the room
and floated into
the surrounding forest
like bird songs nesting.
We drove by his house
dozens of times to Hudson NY
just up 9G for a river walk
and woodfired pizza. And never
knew which house was his.
Now I realize that all the notes,
chords and themes he played
in his studio– long after he moved–
are still there. They’ve become part of
the world of joy he left for us.
I’ll listen for them
among the Catskill Mt. stars
and be grateful for his music
that helped hold
the universe together.
(Sonny Rollins lived in Germantown NY
for over 40 years, moving in 2013)
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by Daniel Warren Brown
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Sonny’s Stance
In the concrete evening
Under the leaning shadows
Of the Lower East Side,
Leaving the small studio apartment
With his Selmer Mark VI sax in his hand,
Leaving a note for Lucille
That closes with:
Be careful
+ Love,
Sonny
Streetlamps blinking into being, one by one.
The smell of diesel subsides.
The city disrobes itself of
The miasma of the day.
Walking the steps up to
The Williamsburg Bridge.
Finding his spot
Above the East River,
the New York of suspension cables.
Lifting his sax, with square-jawed embouchure;
Lips sealed to the reed,
Sometimes from the front of his mouth,
Sometimes to the side.
Sonny’s stance:
his body taut with discipline,
back arched,
searching for the sound,
finding the ancient fires in the song.
Head tilted, eyes drifting toward the blue-black sky,
where a plane is carving its contrail
and the moon is still hiding behind Brooklyn.
Ligaments, phalanges,
working under the skin, racing down the keys,
telegraphing coded messages across the night.
The breath that moves through us all.
It swirls in the same rush-river of air,
From the lungs and diaphragm,
Ribcage squeezing down to push the notes skyward,
Blowing modality into the dark expanse:
Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian
The cosmic song. The divine trinity of music:
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva
Sonny playing through the city.
The city playing through Sonny.
Searching for the sound,
standing on the bridge.
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by Mark Cheatham
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One for Newk
I don’t want to have to
boat across no river Jordan.
I don’t want to don a robe
or hear no golden harp caressed.
My feet don’t need pillowed cumulus.
Just let light slapped waves
roll out from a lip
of blown fog,
over and over, forever,
on Sonny’s St. Thomas.
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by Ed Ruzicka
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Where We Are
The sound spreads, a bright haze
in Kingfisher green.
Sonny Rollins is playing his
horn on Green Dolphin Street.
When the light changes
he steps over the threshold.
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by Miho Kinnas & E. Ethelbert Miller
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Listen to the 1962 recording of Sonny Rollins performing his composition “The Bridge,” with Jim Hall (guitar); Bob Cranshaw (bass); and Ben Riley (drums). [RCA/Bluebird]
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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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Mark Cheatham is a freelance writer and culture and equity advocate from Colorado. He is a former KTCL FM disc jockey, where he was music director for the station’s “Shades of Jazz” programming.
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Bob Hecht frequently contributes his essays, photographs, interviews, playlists and personal stories to Jerry Jazz Musician. His poetry has been published in Modern Haiku, Frogpond, bottle rockets, Red Moon Anthology, Simply Haiku, Contemporary Haibun and others. His photographs have been published in LensWork, The Sun, Black & White and others. His photographs may be seen at www.roberthecht.com or on Instagram @roberthechtphotography2.0.
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Erren Kelly is a three-time Pushcart nominated poet from Boston whose work has appeared in 300 publications (print and online), including Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine, Ceremony, Cacti Fur, Bitterzoet, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, and Poetry Salzburg.
Click here to read “Under Quarantine” — COVID-era poetry of Erren Kelly, published by Jerry Jazz Musician
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Miho Kinnas is a poet and translator living in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. Her latest book is Waiting for Sunset to Bury Red Camellias (Free Verse Press, 2023). She has published a book of poems in collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into the Other Side (Pinyon Publishing).
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E. Ethelbert Miller is a poet and literary activist living in Washington D. C. His latest book is How I Found Love Behind the Catcher’s Mask: Poems (City Point Press, 2022) and he was a nominee for a Grammy in the 2023 Spoken Word Album category with his Black Men Are Precious album.
He has published a book of poems in collaboration with Miho Kinnas, We Eclipse into the Other Side (Pinyon Publishing).
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Mary K O’Melveny, retired labor rights lawyer, lives with her wife near Woodstock, NY. Mary became a fan of Jazz as a very young girl listening to Louis Armstrong and Lester Young on her grandparents’ Victrola record player. Mary’s award-nominated poetry appears in many print and on-line literary journals, anthologies and national blog sites. Mary has authored three poetry collections. Her just-released fourth book, Flight Patterns, is available by clicking here
Click here to read If You Want to Go to Heaven, Follow a Songbird – Mary K O’Melveny’s album of poetry and music, published by Jerry Jazz Musician
Click here to visit her web site
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Ed Ruzicka’s fifth, full-length book of poetry, The Invention of Dreams, was released in April. His poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary and many others. Ed’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the founder and president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana, and lives under live oak limbs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his wife, Renee.
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Steve Trenam teaches poetry writing for Santa Rosa Junior College. Blue Light Press published his An Affront to Gravity in 2021. His work appears in Pandemic Puzzle Poems and in the ekphrastic poetry book, Canyon, River, Stone and Light. He is a founding member of Poetic License Sonoma. Other poems appear in the Redwood Writers poetry anthologies of 2022 and 2023; California Writers’ Club Literary Review, Issue No 11, 2022; Moonlight and Reflections, Nine Sonoma Poets, Valley of the Moon Press, Dec 2022; as well as Larry Robinson’s and Jerry Jazz Musician’s online publications.
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Terrance Underwood is a retired Gas Turbine Package Engineer whose career offered opportunities to work all over the world. A devoted jazz enthusiast, his first memory operating a mechanical devise was a 4-speed spindle drop record changer for his father’s collection of 78s. In 2024, he was nominated by Jerry Jazz Musician for a Pushcart Prize.
Click here to read Proceeding From Behind: A collection of poems grounded in the rhythmic, relating to the remarkable, by Terrance Underwood
Click here to read his collection of poems “With Ease in Mind”
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Click for:
Information about Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry, Vol. II (featuring women poets)
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
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