“Roughly 37 cents per poem. And they’re really good poems.”
A new review of The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems
“. . . I expect each reader will find something special and amazing in the poems within this collection. ”
Read the full review here: https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/the-last-jazz-fan-and-other-poems
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Here’s how “The Poem I have Yet to Write” came to be . . .
Here’s how “The Poem I have Yet to Write” – one of the poems included in my new book, THE LAST JAZZ FAN AND OTHER POEMS – came to be. People seem to be reading it many different ways, but – for me – it began as a tongue-in-cheek response to a comment by the late, great Philip Levine, who said:
“One of the aspects of my own poetry I like best is the presence of people who don’t seem to make it into other people’s poems. Much of our recent poetry seems totally without people. Except for the speaker, no one is there. There’s a lot of snow, a moose walks across the field, the trees darken, the sun begins to set, and a window opens. Maybe from a great distance you can see an old woman in a dark shawl carrying an unrecognizable bundle into the gathering gloom. That’s one familiar poem. In others you get people you’d sooner not meet. They live in the suburbs of a large city, have two children, own a Volvo station wagon; they love their psychiatrists but are having an affair with someone else. Their greatest terror is that they’ll become like their parents and maybe do something dreadful, like furnish the house in knotty pine. You read twenty of those poems and you’re yearning for snow fields and moose tracks.”
So, here’s what I wrote:
The poem I have yet to write
will arrive
fully formed
except for one small
truth tucked into
the smoky recesses
of the unexpected
caesura that waits for you
somewhere beyond
the deep green pond
that cools
the second stanza
and gives up
rippling reflections of
an image we encountered
in the first in which
a solitary figure
can be seen casting
cerulean sensibilities
across a meadow
where wildflowers
and metaphors bloom
like approximations
of redemption or like
tiny epiphanies
bursting into flame
among the spindle trees.
Copyright 2018 Kenneth Salzmann
The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems reviewed on CompulsiveReader.com
“It’s one of those sweet sax solos disguised as a book of poetry, trilling down with ease into the marrow of your bones.
“Kenneth Salzmann may be a musical guy enthralled with jazz, but in this instance music is really a metaphor for poetry. He is a poet. I’m a fan of poetry like his. It’s as simple as that–and as messy. You see, his poetry really does creep into the bones, the marrow, the blood.”
—Jan Peregrine, Compulsivereader.com
Read the full review
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Win a copy of THE LAST JAZZ FAN AND OTHER POEMS (KINDLE edition)
See this #AmazonGiveaway for a chance to win: The Last Jazz Fan: And Other Poems (Kindle Edition).
https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/20b732e00162dfde NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends the earlier of Aug 7, 2018 11:59 PM PDT, or when all prizes are claimed.
See Official Rules http://amzn.to/GArules.
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The Last Jazz Fan and Other Poems by Kenneth Salzmann now available
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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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.
http://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/poem-the-last-jazz-dan/Content?mode=print&oid=2550516
“On the Day of the Dead”
I’m pleased to have my poem “On the Day of the Dead” included in the new issue of Antiphon in both text and audio.
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The (S)catbird
It just didn’t seem fair, the way those experts dissed the catbird on a public radio program I happened upon.
I assume they were correct in saying he’s only a mimic, but isn’t it the case in song that interpreters can matter every bit as much as originators, and quite often surpass the composer in mining the music? How else would you explain, say, Ella Fitzgerald?
So, here’s what I had to say to those opinionated birders, in a poem now appearing in the Winter 2016 issue of WestWard Quarterly (print only).
The (S)catbird
Those believed to best know birdsong say
and say again the catbird lacks a song of its own
to broadcast from the crest of a winterberry tree.
In some way the critics know nature’s error of orchestration
that leaves this bird only to sample the proper sounds
of the wood thrush the magnolia warbler the red-eyed vireo
even the spring peeper, even your neighbor’s lawnmower.
In some way they know that the catbird’s mews
and whistles and squeaks, nasal moans and throaty
gurgles, count only as illegitimate borrowings from
the walls of sound that delimit his woodland home.
But we lack such certainties and, for the gift of lacking,
we still can make with innocent wonder the critical mistake
of marveling at the catbird’s discredited scatted inventions.
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Why not every poem is a sex poem
Okay, here’s the story. Early last summer, I was one of 12 participants in noted novelist/poet/activist Marge Piercy’s annual juried poetry intensive. On a day when we were charged with writing a poem using a single extended metaphor, about half of the people in the workshop showed up with freshly-minted sex poems. Sex lends itself to metaphor, after all. I wasn’t a part of that half, but I couldn’t help but write this for the next session. Then my filmmaker friend Ronn Kilby decided to work on it as well . . .
Why not every poem is a sex poem
Some poems are theological, in a biblical sense.
Some are heroic tales of gland-to-gland combat.
Some political poems turn on a joint session of congress.
A poem can be about completing the jigsaw puzzle,
crashing the custard truck, making a magical sandwich,
sharpening a pencil, parallel parking, or exploring a mine shaft.
A poem can be about checking the oil, churning the butter,
Driving Miss Daisy, filling the gas tank, hitting a home run,
jumping the turnstile, planting a parsnip, or disappointing the wife.
You’ll discover many poems about putting bread in the oven,
plowing through the bean field, passing the gravy, whitewashing
the picket fence, peeling the tree bark, or taking Grandma to Applebee’s.
So why did you think sex has to be the thrust of every poem?
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