Containing over 500 annotated entries for individual poets and several anthologies, this work presents a substantial collection of poems that have been inspired by blues and jazz. Thousands of poems written between 1916 and the present are included. References to individual jazz figures addressed in the poetry are cross-referenced. The range of poems includes homages to jazz musicians and work written primarily to be read with jazz accompaniment. This wide selection of poetry offers a unique guide to the poetry inspired by jazz musicians and their music.

Of interest to scholars and jazz enthusiasts alike, this substantial bibliography, annotated by author and cross-referenced by musician, presents a wealth of information previously unavailable in a single source. The jazz-related poetry identified will attract a range of writers and musicians. Furthermore, the broad variety of poets and anthologies presented crosses many boundaries and will also interest scholars of 20th century poetry, African American literature, and American literature.

Embracing the entire history of jazz poetry, the work defines this inspired literary genre as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music. It discusses the major figures and various movements from the racist poems of the 1920s to contemporary times when the tone of jazz poetry experienced a dramatic change from elegy to celebration. The jazz music of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane transliterated into poetry by the likes of Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown is but a part of this vital work. This unusual volume will be of interest to scholars and students of literature, music, American and African Studies, and popular culture as well as anyone who enjoys jazz and poetry.

Emphasis is given to a call and response between white and African American writers. The earliest jazz poems by white writers from the 1920s, for example, reflected the general anxieties evoked by jazz, particularly regarding race and sexuality, and jazz did not fully become embraced in American verse until Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown published their first books in 1926 and 1932, respectively. By the 1950s, jazz poetry had become a fad, featuring jazz and poetry in performance, and this book spends considerable time addressing the energetic but often wildly unsuccessful work by dominantly white, West coast writers who turned to Charlie Parker as their hero. African American poets from the 1960s, however, focused more on John Coltrane and interpreted his music as a representation of the Black Civil Rights movement. Jazz poetry from the 1970s to the present has had less to do with this call and response between races, and the final two chapters discuss contemporary jazz poetry in terms of its dramatic change in tone from elegy to joy.

One of Copper Canyon Press's missions is to introduce the work of new poets. With the launching of the annual Hayden Carruth Award, the Press is excited to introduce the work of Sascha Feinstein.

Chosen from over a thousand manuscript submissions, "Misterioso" is steeped in the biographies, history, and sounds of jazz music, using a distinctly American idiom to explore personal relationships. Whether writing about John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk (the inspiration for the book's title), Feinstein transcends mere portraiture by emphasizing the meditative and sonorous qualities of jazz music. Feinstein's insistent voice and music are a welcome addition to contemporary American poetry.

"Feinstein links memory, feeling, autobiography, official history with imagination the same way recording engineers ingeniously mix, shape, and color sound....It is bloood and kin, eruptions and rushes of love, scratches of silence--sometimes barely audible between beats--that make these walking, talking poems leap to life and burst into flame."-Al Young

"Feinstein's debut merits the first Hayden Carruth Emerging Poets Award because the poems in it are good, sturdy work and because so many of them touch on one of Carruth's passions, jazz....Feinstein writes excellently about other things--his mother's death, cremations he has witnessed, his love for his Asian wife and their children--but the jazz poems uniquely communicate what it is like to live with music one adores."-Ray Olson, "Booklist"

Sascha Feinstein, winner of the first annual Hayden Carruth Award, has published poems in numerous magazines and journals, such as "American Poetry Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, New England Review," and "Crazyhorse." He is the co-editor (with Yusef Komunyakaa) of "The Jazz Poetry Anthology" and its companion volume "The Second Set," and the author of two critical books, including "Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present." He is an Associate Professor of English at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he co-directs the Creative Writing Program and edits "Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature."

With The Jazz Poetry Anthology, this volume offers a comprehensive exploration of the history of jazz poetry. The Second Set gathers many poets omitted from The Jazz Poetry Anthology, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Arthur Brown, Diane di Prima, Henry Dumas, Nikki Giovanni, David Henderson, Anselm Hollo, Haki Madhubuti, Michael McClure, Larry Neal, Dudley Randall, Eugene B. Redmond, Carolyn M. Rodgers, Ntozake Shange, A. B. Spellman, and Jay Wright. The Second Set fills out the history of jazz poetry with poems written before World War II, as well as those from the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, and includes contemporary writers from a range of cultural backgrounds, including Ai, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Martin Espada, Joy Harjo, Keorapetse Kgositsile, Michael Longley, Mwatabu Okantah, Charles Simic, Lorenzo Thomas, Derek Walcott, Ron Welburn, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

Embracing a wide variety of poems informed by jazz, The Second Set also includes statements of poetics by many of the poets anthologized."

A gathering of the best jazz fiction from the 1920s to the present, this anthology includes 20th-century fiction by Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Richard Yates, and others, plus important recent work from writers such as Yusef Komunyakaa, Xu Xi, and Amiri Baraka. Together these artists demonstrate the strong influence of jazz on fiction. That influence can be felt in prose styles shaped by jazz freewheeling, dramatic, conversational, improvisatory; in stories of players and listeners searching for what lies beyond the music's aesthetic power; and in the ambience of the jazz performance as captured by the written word. What sounds throughout these stories is the universal voice of humanity that is the essence of the music."

Ask Me Now explores the relationship between the language of music and the music of language with 20 conversations on jazz and literature. Writer, editor, and saxophonist Sascha Feinstein gathers a variety of artists, poets, musicians, fiction writers, essayists, playwrights, and record producers for discussions on the elusive but engaging relationships between jazz and literature.

Featured artists include central figures of the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Sonia Sanchez as well as distinguished music critics Gary Giddins, Dan Morgenstern, and Eugene B. Redmond. Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry Yusef Komunyakaa and Philip Levine, outstanding jazz musicians Bill Crow and Fred Hersch, and several writers who cross literary genres: Hayden Carruth, Cornelius Eady, David Jauss, William Matthews, Lee Meitzen Grue, John Sinclair, and Al Young all contribute their thoughts to the book.

..". in a class by itself... sensitive, moving, and powerful jazz imagery... the perfect companion to listening to good jazz." Jazziz Magazine

"In the course of the history of jazz, there have been only a few articles that get to the core of the meaning of jazz. These poems hit it right on the head, and the book is certainly essential for anyone who is interested in our music." Dizzy Gillespie

"To those interested in the impact of jazz upon the poetry of our century I recommend this anthology altogether without reservation." John Lucas, JazzTimes

..". essential... Its virtues are varied and copious, and not the least among them is discovering a writer whose work is new to you." Los Angeles Reader

"What makes this work most enjoyable is knowing the music and musicians and using that knowledge to understand and judge the poets reactions to the elements in the music that please and inspire us." MultiCultural Review

"Filled with a variety of form, rhythm, and sound, this anthology is an absolute MUST for anyone who is even remotely interested in jazz and modern literature." David Baker

Since the turn of the century, poets have responded to jazz in all its musical and cultural overtones. The poems here cover the range of jazz itself: from early blues to free jazz and experimental music. Among the 132 poets included are James Baldwin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, Mina Loy, Ishmael Reed, and Sonia Sanchez. This anthology represents the broad appreciation for jazz as poetic inspiration, not only from the Beat movement but from writers across the decades and around the world."

Embracing the entire history of jazz poetry, the work defines this inspired literary genre as poetry necessarily informed by jazz music. It discusses the major figures and various movements from the racist poems of the 1920s to contemporary times when the tone of jazz poetry experienced a dramatic change from elegy to celebration. The jazz music of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane transliterated into poetry by the likes of Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown is but a part of this vital work. This unusual volume will be of interest to scholars and students of literature, music, American and African Studies, and popular culture as well as anyone who enjoys jazz and poetry. Emphasis is given to a call and response between white and African American writers. The earliest jazz poems by white writers from the 1920s, for example, reflected the general anxieties evoked by jazz, particularly regarding race and sexuality, and jazz did not fully become embraced in American verse until Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown published their first books in 1926 and 1932, respectively. By the 1950s, jazz poetry had become a fad, featuring jazz-and-poetry in performance, and this book spends considerable time addressing the energetic but often wildly unsuccessful work by dominantly white, West coast writers who turned to Charlie Parker as their hero. African American poets from the 1960s, however, focused more on John Coltrane and interpreted his music as a musical representation of the Black Civil Rights movement. Jazz poetry from the 1970s to the present has had less to do with this call and response between races, and the final two chapters discuss contemporary jazz poetry in terms of its dramatic changein tone from elegy to joy.