Poems on Charlie “Bird” Parker (inspired by a painting by Al Summ) – an ekphrastic poetry collection
A collection of 26 poems inspired by the painting of Charlie Parker by the artist Al Summ.
...November 17th, 2025
charlie parker
The Sunday Poem: “Gloria’s Step” by Daniel Warren Brown
Going into my bedroom at 2 a.m. in 1970
Lost in the meditation of the
Bill Evans Sunday Vanguard trio
Obligato revelations of a trio
that transformed listening
Right before my ears
October 4th, 2025
The Sunday Poem: “Kansas City Lights” by Jennifer Maritza McCauley
Touchdown or Something,
back to you: crisping, lighted place
my swift escape, humble
glitz, jazz’d instrument
blowing quavers, shaking, from the cave
of your trumpet sounding like
all of my loving memories
May 10th, 2025
“Charlie Parker in End of Winter” – a poem (for March) by Jerrice J. Baptiste
March winds swirl.
Frozen is the pond
where children skate.
In New York we wrap
our toes in pure white
wool blankets.
March 1st, 2025
Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 2025 Jazz Poetry Calendar
Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 12-month 2025 calendar of jazz poetry winds through the upcoming year with her poetic grace while inviting us to wander through music by the likes of Hoagy Carmichael, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sarah Vaughan, Melody Gardot and Charlie Parker.
...December 31st, 2024
“Gone Guy: Jazz’s Unsung Dodo Marmarosa,” by Michael Zimecki
An essay remembering the late jazz musician Michael “Dodo” Marmarosa, awarded Esquire Magazine’s New Star Award in 1947, and who critics predicted would dominate the jazz scene for the next 30 years.
...September 25th, 2024
Interview with Tad Richards, author of Jazz With a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940 – 1960
While small group swing was shunned by the jazz critical establishment for being too flamboyant and too close a cousin to the emerging (and despised) rock and roll, Richards makes the case that small group swing players like Illinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, Big Jay McNeely, Joe Liggins, Red Prysock, T-Bone Walker and Ray Charles played a legitimate jazz that was a more pleasing listening experience to the Black community than the bebop of Parker, Dizzy, Bud Powell and Monk. It is a fascinating era, filled with major figures and events, and centered on a rigorous debate that continues to this day – is small group swing “real jazz?”
...April 29th, 2024
“Ornithology” – a Ghazal by Joel Glickman
I saw some crows in low and noisy flight.
I watched them until they were out of sight.
And I have heard, at times, the calling geese,
above and unseen in the autumn night,
April 24th, 2024
Interview with Gary Carner, author of Pepper Adams: Saxophone Trailblazer
The author speaks with Bob Hecht about his book and his decades-long dedication to the genius of Pepper Adams, the stellar baritone saxophonist whose hard-swinging bebop style inspired many of the top-tier modern baritone players.
...January 9th, 2024
The Sunday Poem: “Fledging” by John L. Stanizzi
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
The Sunday Poem: “Musical Invocation” by Kathryn MacDonald
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
A Charlie Parker poetry collection
Nine poets, nine poems on the leading figure in the development of bebop…
...May 17th, 2023
“Liner Notes to Charlie Parker” – a poem (and playlist) by Chuck Sweetman
The poet writes a fantasy about Parker’s time in the California asylum Camarillo…a 15 song playlist accompanies the poem
...May 16th, 2023
From the Interview Archive: a 2014 interview with Stanley Crouch, author of Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker
In a 2014 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, the late jazz writer and cultural critic Stanley Crouch shares his thoughts on Charlie Parker, a great genius of modern music…
...May 15th, 2023
“In Tribute to Ted Joans” — two poems on Charlie Parker, by Catherine Lee
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
A Black History Month Profile: Charlie Parker
In a 2014 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, the late jazz writer and cultural critic Stanley Crouch shares his thoughts on Charlie Parker, the great genius of modern music…
.
...February 24th, 2022
“Fledging” — a poem by John L. Stanizzi
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
“Birdflight” — a poem (for Phil Schaap) by Marilyn Mohr
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
“An Elegy For Charlie Parker”– a poem by David Cooke
I can see you sitting outside the Reno
where the Mob’s tight hold makes dollars spin.
You are scuffling the dust, then homing in
whenever Lester launches his solo.
April 6th, 2021
Interview with Dave Chisholm, author of the graphic novel Chasin’ the Bird: Charlie Parker in California
Author Dave Chisholm talks about the experience creating his graphic novel about Charlie Parker in California, “Chasin’ the Bird”
...February 15th, 2021
“Bird Lives!” — a poem by Geoff Polk
The needle drops on Charlie Parker
playing “Relaxin’ at Camarillo”
the boy lies on the floor
of his room and listens to the gorgeous ease
the affirmation
buoyant love song
August 14th, 2020
Interview with Philip Clark, author of Dave Brubeck: A Life in Time
The author discusses the enigmatic and extraordinary pianist, composer, and band leader, whose most notable achievements came during a time of major societal and cultural change, and often in the face of critics who at times found his music too technical and bombastic.
...July 6th, 2020
“Marge” — a true jazz story by T.S. Davis
When I met her around 1990, I was an RN working in Seattle at the University of Washington Medical Center on the Rehab Medicine Unit. She was my patient, and I’ll call her…Marge.
...April 30th, 2020
“Charles Ingham’s Jazz Narratives” — Vol. 4
Ingham’s “Jazz Narratives” connect time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history. This edition’s narratives are “Released from Camarillo State Hospital, Charlie Parker Plays Jack’s Basket Room,” “Diz Railing at the Cosmos,” and “Speaking in Tongues”
...April 3rd, 2020
“Charles Ingham’s Jazz Narratives” — Vol. 1
These photo-narratives are provocative, meaningful and brilliant – connecting time, place, and subject in a way that ultimately allows the viewer a unique way of experiencing jazz history.
...February 17th, 2020
“Thinking About Charlie Parker” — a photo-narrative by Charles Ingham
“Thinking about Charlie Parker,” comes from a series entitled Pastoral Scenes from the Gallant South (from Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”).
...May 31st, 2019
“Listening to Charlie Parker, Play Jazz, In the Dark” — a poem by Alan Yount
charlie parker
sits on the end
of my bed
holding his alto sax.
and for pete’s sake! mr. traps:
buddy rich was also there,
getting his drum kit ready
by the end of the bed.
then ray brown’s there
and making a
September 13th, 2018
“The Color of Jazz” — an essay by Bob Hecht
The late, great trumpeter Clark Terry once offered one of the most pointed, and humorous, comments about the perennial controversies in jazz over race and the perceived abilities of white versus black musicians…
He said, “My theory is that a note doesn’t give a
...August 16th, 2018
“Harry Listens to Mister Parker Play” — a poem by Michael L. Newell
wind howls through trees round
corners shaking bushes windows eaves
lightning fractures night and all
you locked up in memory too fragile
to be handled comes tumbling out
July 26th, 2018
“Even the drummers on 52nd St. sound like Dizzy Gillespie!”
While the romantic notion is to imagine that the music coming out of the clubs lining New York’s 52nd Street during the 1940’s was universally applauded, we of course know that is not the case. In an example of this dissent, consider the words of Los Angeleno Norman Granz, who told Downbeat this during his April, 1945 visit to New York:
“Jazz in New York stinks! Even the drummers on 52nd St. sound like Dizzy Gillespie!”
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in the quality of music here. We keep getting great reports out west about the renaissance of jazz along 52nd St. but I’d like to know where it is. Literally, there isn’t one trumpet player in any of the clubs with the exception of ‘Lips’ Page and he was blowing a mellophone the night I caught him. Maybe Gillespie was great but the ‘advanced’ group that Charlie Parker is fronting at the Three Deuces doesn’t
...January 30th, 2018
“Bird Lives” — a memory of Charlie Parker’s Kansas City, by Robert Hecht
The night I truly ‘got’ the shining genius of Charlie Parker I was in my girlfriend’s apartment on the Lower East Side. The year was 1961. I was nineteen, she was much older and hipper, and had turned me on not only to some great music but to getting high as well. She had all the essential jazz records, including the one on the turntable that night. It was The Fabulous Bird, on the old Jazztone label, consisting of reissues of some of Bird’s phenomenal 1947 Dial sessions. She had a very low-fi stereo—I can still see the nickel she had scotch-taped to the tone arm to keep it in the grooves. But the fidelity didn’t matter, in part at least because this evening I had just smoked a
...January 3rd, 2018
“Progress” — a poem by Freddington
Oh, to see back into the beginning,
To 1944, and 52nd street,
To Minton’s Playhouse, and the Royal Roost,
To Monk and Bud’s first rehearsals,
To see the fever spread,
To see the disciples line up to sit in,
November 7th, 2017
“Liner Notes for ‘Stardust’ — In Seven Choruses,” a cycle of short poems by Doug Fowler
“Liner Notes for ‘Stardust’ — In Seven Choruses” is a cycle of short poems framed as imaginary liner notes and prompted by poet Doug Fowler’s favorite musical covers of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust.” In essence, according to Fowler, they are “imaginary liner notes for a real song about an imaginary song about love.”
The cycle is also partially a tribute to Chu Berry, who died as the result of a car accident in Conneaut, Ohio, in 1941, not far from where Fowler lives.
...April 25th, 2016
“Charlie Parker negative” — a poem by Sean Lause
No trickster god,
demon, savior, saint or
train wreck, but human, very.
Not irrational, primal,
primitive, dark unconscious,
exile or martyr.
No more priapic
than your Sunday morning
erection. Not lost or liminal.
March 26th, 2016
“Charlie Parker’s Yardbird” — the opera
In what is described by New York Times classical music writer Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim as the company’s “wider shift toward more new music,” on June 5, Opera Philadelphia will present the premier of composer Daniel Schnyder’s “Charlie Parker’s Yardbird,” which stars Lawrence Brownlee as the bebop legend.
According to Fonseca-Wollheim, Opera Philadelphia has “a general willingness to take risks on unorthodox subjects and genres. Philadelphia’s last season featured the American premiere of Ana Sokolovic’s ‘Svadba,’ a raucous Balkan wedding ritual; October will bring a ‘Popera’ about Andy Warhol, mixing elements of cabaret and opera.”
“The mix of musical styles is especially risky in ‘Yardbird,’” Fonseca-Wollheim writes, “since it offers
...June 1st, 2015
“Bird” — a poem by Ed Coletti
I recall you
dream weaver
I remember you
You’re the one
who makes most dreams
come true
Sir Charles
just not your own
when the sax
ceases dreadfully
heroes fall
trumpets screech
Max Roach calls you
to attention
Sir Charles
listen to Diz
man just don’t fade man!
I hear Lover again
Bird you’re with me
like my mother’s voice
February 26th, 2015
Monday Jazz Quiz #33
In 1938, Charlie Parker stayed in this musician’s New York apartment, despite the wife’s objections. Who is he?
Roy Eldridge
Coleman Hawkins
Billy Eckstine
Art Tatum
Dizzy Gillespie
Lester Young
Kenny Clarke
Buster Smith
...April 7th, 2014
Monday Jazz Quiz #28
What sax player initially turned from the alto to the tenor sax in a purported effort to escape his image as a follower of Charlie Parker?
_____
Dexter Gordon
Cannonball Adderley
Nat Adderley
Sonny Stitt
Sonny Rollins
Gene Ammons
Roland Kirk
...March 3rd, 2014
Interview with Stanley Crouch, author of Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker
Described by the New York Times as a “bebop Beowulf,” Stanley Crouch’s Kansas City Lightning: The Life and Times of Charlie Parker is a love song to the life and times of Bird, one of jazz music’s most critically important figures. Mr. Crouch, himself an essential participant in both contemporary criticism and in the delivery of live performance (through his work with Jazz at Lincoln Center), discusses his long-anticipated biography with Jerry Jazz Musician in a recently conducted interview.
...January 22nd, 2014
“Bird Read Beckett,” a poem by Erren Kelly
In anticipation of our very soon-to-be-published interview with Charlie Parker biographer Stanley Crouch (see the preview below), poet Erren Kelly defends Parker from the caricature portrayed in Clint Eastwood’s 1989 film Bird.
Bird Read Beckett
bird read samuel beckett
he read novels and plays
he lived his life as one long
exstitential episode
he prided himself on being
intellectual
bird loved his fried chicken
and preferred his gin
to go down smooth
like his solos
mr. eastwood,
take that lie back
and apologize!
January 21st, 2014
Monday Quiz Show #8
This influential musician, composer and vocalist wrote the lyrics to Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” Who is he?
...October 14th, 2013
When Charlie Parker Played for Igor Stravinsky
Ever since Patrick Jarenwattananon of the NPR Classical Music blog Deceptive Cadence published a story called “Why Jazz Musicians Love ‘The Rite of Spring'” in May, there has been a lot of traffic on the Jerry Jazz Musician page devoted to the meeting of Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky. NPR linked their readers to our “Great Encounters” page called “When Charlie Parker played for Igor Stravinsky,” where Jazz Modernism author, the late jazz scholar Alfred Appel, tells the story of how “Stravinsky roared with delight
...September 27th, 2013
Kansas City Jazz: A Pictorial Tour
In cooperation with Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix, authors of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop — a look at the fascinating historyof Kansas City’s golden age through book excerpts, photos and music
...April 15th, 2013
Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes!” So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of “bebop” and establishing Monk as one of America’s greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk’s hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.
...April 15th, 2013
“Accent on Youth,” by Sam Bishoff
Sam Bishoff, a high school student from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is the 2012 Jerry Jazz Musician “Accent on Youth” writer. His passion for jazz and the challenges he faces as a youthful fan of it is the focus of the column.
...February 26th, 2013
Poetry by Erren Kelly
Footprints ( for Wayne Shorter )
you speak no evil
when you talk about the miles
you traveled, the
way your sax sounded
like a thunderstorm
or spoke like a child
November 22nd, 2012
Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz
Stanley Crouch — MacArthur “genius” award recipient, co-founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Book Award nominee, and perennial bull in the china shop of black intelligentsia — has been writing about jazz and jazz artists for over thirty years. His reputation for controversy is exceeded only by a universal respect for his intellect and passion. As Gary Giddins notes: “Stanley may be the only jazz writer out there with the kind of rhinoceros hide necessary to provoke and outrage and then withstand the fulminations that come back.”
...September 10th, 2006
Great Encounters #23: When Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker Played 52nd Street
Excerpted from Chasin’ The Bird : The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker, by by Brian Priestley.
Early in 1945, Parker had begun his first live small-band gigs with Gillespie, after he too left Eckstine the previous December, working briefly with Boyd Radburn and then being booked on the Street. In the meantime, Charlie himself had played some Monday nights at the Spotlite (run by Clark Monroe of the Uptown House) and deputised in the Cootie Williams band, narrowly missing the young pianist Bud Powell, who had been invalided out of the band by a vicious beating from the police in Philadelphia. But, when Dizzy hired Charlie to complete the frontline of his new quintet at the Three Deuces in March,
...February 9th, 2006
Brian Priestley, author of Chasin’ The Bird : The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker has been idolized by generations of jazz musicians and fans. Indeed, his spectacular musical abilities — his blinding speed and brilliant improvisational style — made Parker a legend even before his tragic death at age thirty-four.
In Chasin’ The Bird, Brian Priestley tells Parker’s life story, from his Kansas City childhood to his final harrowing days in New York. Priestley offers new insight into Parker’s career, beginning as a teenager single-mindedly devoted to mastering the saxophone, to his first trip to New York, where he washed dishes for $9.00 a week at Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, a favorite hangout of the great pianist Art Tatum, whose stunning speed and ingenuity were an influence on the young musician.
...February 6th, 2006
Chuck Haddix, author of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop
There were but four major galaxies in the early jazz universe, and three of them — New Orleans, Chicago, and New York — have been well documented in print. But there has never been a serious history of the fourth, Kansas City, until the recent publication of Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop — A History, by Frank Driggs and Chuck Haddix.
...September 30th, 2005
John Leland, author of Hip: The History
John Leland’s Hip: The History is the story of an American obsession. Derived from the Wolof word hepi or hipi (“to see,” or “to open one’s eyes”), which came to America with West African Slaves, hip is the dance between black and white — or insider and outsider — that gives America its unique flavor and rhythm. It has created fortunes, destroyed lives and shaped the way millions of us talk, dress, dance, make love or see ourselves in the mirror. Everyone knows what hip is.
...January 3rd, 2005
Martin Torgoff, author of Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age
Illicit drugs have transfigured the American cultural landscape in the past half-century, leaving their mark on everything from art, music, literature, sexuality, spirituality, pop culture, the economy, and politics, to crime, public health, and national law enforcement policy. In Can’t Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945 – 2000, documentary filmmaker and writer Martin Torgoff traces the tangled trajectory of illegal drug use in America, as it spread post-World War II from the Beats and bebop musicians, all the way to the Ecstasy-fueled rave culture.
...August 27th, 2004
Great Encounters #1: When Charlie Parker played for Igor Stravinsky
Excerpted from Jazz Modernism, by Alfred Appel
Charlie Parker enthusiasts circa 1950 often declared him the jazz equivalent of Stravinsky and Bartok, and asserted that he’d absorbed their music, though skeptics countered that there was no evidence he was even familiar with it. Parker himself clarified the issue for me one night in the winter of 1951, at New York’s premier modern jazz club, Birdland, at Broadway and Fifty-second Street. It was Saturday night, Parker’s quintet was the featured attraction, and he was in his prime, it seemed. I had a good table near the front, on the left side of the bandstand, below the piano. The house was almost full, even before the opening set
...January 29th, 2004
Amy Albany, author of Low Down: jazz, junk and other fairy tales from childhood
Look up pianist Joe Albany in the All Music Guide to Jazz and you will discover that during his career he associated with the likes of Benny Carter, Lester Young, Joe Venuti, Warne Marsh, and even Charlie Parker, and that eight of the albums recorded under his name in the United States and Europe between 1957 and 1982 are still in print. In the short biography accompanying Albany’s critical discography, the writer Scott Yanow touches briefly on his troubled life, his drug abuse, and his many wives, and concludes that given these circumstances, “…it is miraculous that he lived to almost reach 64.”
...November 11th, 2003
John Szwed, author of So What: The Life of Miles Davis
More than half a century after his bebop debut, and more than eleven years after his death, Miles Davis lives on. His music is used to pitch jeans, shape films, and personify an era. To this day, he is revered as the archetype of cool.
While several books have been written about Davis, including his own autobiography, due to his passion for reinvention and his extreme reticence the real story of Miles Davis has been obscured by the legend and widely misunderstood.
...January 27th, 2003
The Ralph Ellison Project: Robert O’Meally, editor of Living With Music, discusses Invisible Man author Ralph Ellison
While Ralph Ellison will forever be best remembered as author of the classic American novel of identity, Invisible Man, he also contributed significant essays on jazz that stand as compelling testaments to his era. His work included an homage to Duke Ellington, stinging critiques of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and recognition of the changing-of-the-guard taking place at Harlem’s Minton’s in the 1940’s. He wrote on musical topics from flamenco to Charlie Christian, and from Jimmy Rushing to Mahalia Jackson.
...August 20th, 2002
Interview with bassist Leroy Vinegar
Bassist Leroy Vinegar talks about his life in jazz music…
...August 29th, 1999
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In this Issue
The Sunday Poem
”Never Again (Working Poems for JD Allen)” by Sean Howard
The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work...
Sean Howard introduces and reads his poem
Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem
Interview
Poetry
Feature
Poetry
Poetry
Short Fiction
Poetry
Feature
Feature
Poetry
Short Fiction
Poetry
Short Fiction
Poetry
A Letter from the Publisher
The High Price of Authoritarianism– by editor/publisher Joe Maita...An essay inspired by my recent experiences witnessing the ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of liberation of several World War II concentration camps in Germany.
Jazz History Quiz
Playlist
Poetry
Short Fiction
Feature
Short Fiction
Community
Interview
Poetry
Feature
Community
Contributing Writers
Coming Soon
Interview Archive
