LOVE IS …
by Alan Yount
a slow
wind
that blows
the steady embers
of
a campfire …
just
before
bed.
and love also is
a sarah vaughan
song
that stays
singing
in your head …
and longer than that
through
the whole night …
as the
fire
burns on & on.
_____
Driving ‘Em Home
by Susandale
Love me in delirious colors
that saturate the skies
You know
Like Satchmo
drilling ‘em high
to a hot moon
rolling in a sea of moondust
_____
All That We Need. Nothing More.
by Freddington
A seamless recording,
Dreamy and drifting,
Miles’ trumpet hovers like a dragonfly,
Suspended in a summer afternoon,
Standing in the shade,
The cool grass between our toes,
The music flows through the park like a soft breeze,
Cannonball’s alto darts through the trees,
Coltrane’s tenor blows out strong,
Bill’s piano gently ripples the water in the wading pool,
In the distance, kids are running through the sprinklers.
Everything is as it should be.
__________
Alan Yount lives on the north bank of the Missouri River, just south of Columbia, Missouri, and has taken poetic inspiration from boating and floating the river for many years. His poems have been published in a variety of publications, including Palo Alto Review, Roanoke Review, Spring…the Journal of E.E. Cummings Society, Apostrophe Magazine, Columbia College Journal of the Literary Arts, Modern Haiku, Pegasus Review, and Tidepool Magazine. Alan also plays jazz trumpet, and has led his own dance band. He is a direct descendant of the famous frontiersman, Daniel Boone.
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Susandale’s poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Mad Swirl, Penman Review, The Voices Project, and Jerry Jazz Musician. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. Two published chapbooks,The Spaces Among Spaces from languageandculture.org, and Bending the Spaces of Time from Barometric Pressure have been on the internet.
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Freddington works as a shipper/receiver in Toronto, Canada, and has been a lifelong jazz fan ever since he was “corrupted” as a teenager by Charles Mingus’ “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.”
A great variety and a splendid collection of jazz
Gorgeous poem, Patricia! So much richness in so few words.
To bring from the lips to the ear or the fingers to the ear and into the body so much of life and love is such a fine thing that the poet and the musician have married here that all we can do that is celebrate and hallelujah.
I’m very happy to be part of such a fine collection. I particularly enjoyed Michael Newell’s ‘Vintage Inn ..’ and Lawrence Koumas’s lovely little anecdote.
This collection has too many good poems and poets to acknowledge every poem and every poet worthy of attention. I will, therefore, single out a handful of poets who moved me deeply. The list would include Gannon Daniels, Robert Nisbet, Susana Case, Dan Franch, Patricia Carragon, John Stupp, and Aurora Lewis. If I went back and reread all the poems for a fourth or fifth time, I would likely expand this list considerably. I tip my hat to all the fine artists in this collection, and I thank Joseph Maita for putting all these fine poems together in such an appealing way.
Michael,
I especially like the way the way the two settings, outside and inside the Inn in the first poem, as in these lines:
outside the night is filled
with cigarette smoke lightning
and Lithia Creek swirling over rocks
In the second poem, I hear the music playing in the background of the second poem.
I am pleased that I was able to participate in a poetry writing event which includes the deeply felt emotions of jazz music and love and its individual expressions in form and format. I will read these with great pleasure. This idea to showcase it on Valentines date was terrific.