Blue Notes: poems

SKU: 9761903171518
SKU: 9781903171516
$10.00
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Fifty poems about music of all kinds, starting with jazz and blues poems about Eric Dolphy, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis and Coltrane, each jazzman playing his own version of the American Dream. A poem too about bluesman Robert Johnson who was said to have sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for the gift of music. 

In Blue Notes, he sings a new song, God in Heaven Blues. Blue Notes includes a portrait of piano teacher Mrs. Stuyvesant who scares her young piano students who climb to her 4th-floor apartment, then plays music at night like stars dancing over glittering waterfalls. 


In Moonshine Moon, two songwriters labor to write hit songs all miserably hot summer in an 8th-floor apartment, with wind off the river/blowing in heat and the stink/of factories on the west side. 


There are dreamers in Blue Notes like Jack in the Bus Station, off to the city with guitar, bag of songs and $37, vowing not to return until he is famous. An AIDS patient plans not his 35th birthday but his Final Chorus, his funeral including Gregorian chants, Native American prayers, and the Japanese flute music he loves so much. 


Eight poems about Johnny Cash, including Johnny Cash in Heaven, God letting Cash in so He and His angels can listen to the Man in Black any time they want. In the final section, Stars, poems about Emmylou Harris, Dylan, the Beatles, Tim Buckley and Nick Drake. 


Finally, for lost musicians everywhere, there is Lost Highway, where Hank Williams drives a new white Chevy, Hendrix hikes with his guitar, snow in his hair, and Kurt Cobain, barbed wire necklace,/shotgun gripped in his fist, tries to thumb a ride. They are all headed for Salvation City, where they will keep on singing. 


Fifty poems about music to make you sing and dance, to help you find your way down any lost highway you happen to end up on.


Paperback; 80 pages


About the Author:


Brian Daldorph teaches at the University of Kansas and Douglas County Jail in Lawrence, Kansas. He edits Coal City Review. His previous book: Ice Age/Edad de Hielo (Irrupciones P, 2017).

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