The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems, a collection of recent and selected poems by Kenneth Salzmann, is now available from Amazon.com and other major online booksellers.
The book has drawn praise from such literary notables as the iconic poet-novelist-activist Marge Piercy, who said, “Salzmann is a rare poet who can draft excellent and moving poems about nature and politics, about love and place, about old age, spirituality and friendship.
“You can feel in the poems the intelligence of the mind that created them and the compassion and wit of the poet.”
Novelist and short story writer Lucia Nevai, a recipient of the Iowa Award for Short Fiction and the author of Seriously (Little Brown) and Salvation (Tin House), said of The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems, “Here is a mind unfairly comfortable with paradox, be it intellectual, emotional or spiritual — and a heart-breaking voice that is up to the task.”
The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems contains 31 poems and retails for $10.95.
The Last Jazz Fan
for David Peirce
The last Jazz fan slipped
from the world one night
like the amorphous
notes of a trumpet solo
at closing time. Some say
reedy melodies hovered
above him like nimbus clouds
at the exact moment rhythm
left the room. Explosive riffs
be-bopped across the sky
when the last jazz fan
returned to stardust,
and clarinets cooled
the darkness. Some say
it is the silent spaces between
that describe the song,
but some say the spaces
might expand until
they swallow the song
and silence is certain.
“The Last Jazz Fan” was first published in Chronogram. Copyright 2017/2018 Kenneth Salzmann
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