Jazz Poetry
Requiem Improvisation #2 After Charles Lloyd – Kindred Spirits (From The Lobero)
by Roger Aplon
Here Take my hand We'll suggest a moment To remember Was it that place among the stars you used to recall As if It were Just-around-the-corner Maybe An affair Left a fracture Too sharp To heal Quickly if-at-all Don't be tempted Follow close-by Don't ever Be Easily Dismissed Remember You Deserve To Be Counted If not Celebrated. Was it that first time? I only ask to be a part of ...
Continue ReadingHead Chart
by Mike Jurkovic
As rain falls on Gethsemane angels on the highway crew fix the roads in heaven Sing acapella big band Head chart Blue Trane Hoist a shot head for home Headlong into the headwinds Sans the dismal river The smoke dust sky The steady indictment of time ...
Continue ReadingMiles Runs The Voodoo Down
by Ronald Bremner
Miles boils his bitches brew in a night of worlds much blacker than black His demons and angels let out slack for pharaohs dancing into the true Miles runs the voodoo down and serves it up with the taste of free for those whose spirits would otherwise drown without such wild, mad sanctuary. ...
Continue ReadingA Little Rain In Arkansas
by George Wallace
Professor fear & his longhair piano sat on the bandstand he was just about to play some boogie-woogie when somebody fresh from pontchartrain with a three-piece suit walked in--did you see that thing go down, bartender? Walked right in & the door slapped shut tight as a tornado behind him a man in a three piece suit & he walked right up to ruby (some people called her needle of smoke) who was addicted to jazz & yes he was a handsome man, a blues pantomime, ...
Continue Reading6jazzhaiku
by Mike Jurkovic
Mingus and the moon over Mohonk the myths the mountain melodies in small rooms without windows the high humor of comrades lost in jazz crescent moon hangs low above brooklyn saxophone blues a sad guitar Trane blowing truth to every corner of the room big blue westside moon Dolphy and winter's first snow Dolphy's blue flute and the winter's first snow
Continue ReadingSolo Monk: A Poem By Steve Kowit
by AAJ Staff
One day back in the '60s, Monk was sitting at the piano, Charlie Mingus pulling at his coat how Monk should put the word in so the Mingus group could play the Five Spot, seeing as how Monk's already legendary gig down there was ending--Mingus all persuasion & cajolery, ran it down for twenty minutes till he capped it with the comment: ..."Dig it, Thelonious, you know we Black Brothers ...GOT to ...
Continue ReadingMy Uncle Played The Sax
by Louis Bryan
Russet face glistening from another realm, eyes dancing to, A Love Supreme, he be-bopped through my boyhood, fingering those keys like crazy, taking and making them notes his own, empyrean melodies to fill the whole room, my ears entirely, too-cool evocations of heroes who've remained mine, and so I still hear Charlie, John, Ornette, Rashan, Lester, all my ethereal idols whose music I first heard, coming from the bell of ...
Continue ReadingPoetry and Jazz: A Chronology
by Duncan Heining
My intention here is to offer a detailed but inevitably incomplete chronology of poetry and jazz. The focus is solely on the combination of the two art forms in performance, not on poetry about jazz or jazz musicians or poetry inspired by jazz but not performed to music. My definition of 'poetry' is fairly broad and extends to spoken word/text combined with jazz. Hopefully, readers will be able to add to the chronology by contributing further examples of which I ...
Continue ReadingThe Fire in Coltrane’s Lungs
by Larry Jaffe
When the horn sounds the jazz begins Unity rediscovered A crisscross divergence of souls Coltrane steals the birthright of his heritage makes it into music The horn blasts loud and not so pure-- Life lives between the notes not at the end of the song Painfully hidden tones magically appear dragged out one by one by one breathless gasps of tonal agony Coltrane plays tears of subjugation between notes of joyous rhapsody
Continue ReadingKissing Cousins: Jazz + poetry = jazz poetry
by Jeff Winke
Believe it or not there have been times when jazz and poetry intertwine. The music inspires the poetry and creates a non-mainstream style of writing... jazz poetry. Innovations in music and poetics in the early part of the 20th century surfaced in the 1920's. The simultaneous evolution of poetry and jazz music was not lost upon musicians and writers of the time. The two art forms merge and form the genre of jazz poetry. However, note that there's ...
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