Community Bookshelf #4

March 14th, 2025

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Stewart Butterfield, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Greetings:

…..“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings.

…..This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so, and is limited to those who submitted their news by the edition’s publication deadline.

…..All book descriptions, biographies, and photos were submitted by the writers with only minimal editing.  Click on the author’s name under the book cover to be taken to pages where their work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician.

…..I anticipate the next edition will be in the fall of 2025. Please get in touch with me as soon as possible if you expect to have a book published between March, 2025 and September, 2025, and would like to be included in “Community Bookshelf, #5”

…..Thanks for reading, and for supporting those who contribute their work to Jerry Jazz Musician.

Joe Maita

Editor/Publisher

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The Dark Blues in Sharp, Bright Colors/10 Short Stories by Brian Greene

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…..This is a collection of 10 short stories, four of which have been individually published by literary outlets (including Jerry Jazz Musician). The stories are works of literary fiction that follow characters at critical moments in their lives. A recent divorcee uneasily enters the online dating arena; a young boy has his first experiences with inner trauma when his family makes a a major geographical move; a bachelor reluctantly agrees to babysit his friend’s daughter and has an epiphany he couldn’t have expected; a college student with a working-class background becomes involved with a wealthy and spoiled woman and both are surprised by the relationship that develops between them; a single father struggles while trying to understand and cope with his teenage daughter’s mental health crisis. The stories show how the characters respond to these life-changing episodes and point to what might come next.

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View the book on Amazon by clicking here

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Brian Greene writes short stories, as well as journalism features on books, music, film, and fine arts. His work has appeared in approximately 50 online and print publications. Brian lives in Durham, North Carolina and he’s on Twitter/X @greenes_circles.

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An Absence of Fear, by Holly Peppe [Amplify]

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…..Unpretentious, finely crafted, and luminous in their depth of feeling, the collected poems of Holly Peppe reflect a love for language and its nuances. They vary in mood and tone, incorporating vivid observations of people and places, insights into human wants and needs, and dark humor disguising fears that are often all too real: “We laugh when we run out of fear.”

…..An Absence of Fear offers readers a primer on how to be sensitive to the world around us while living every day to the fullest, even after learning it might be our last.

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A poem from the book:

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Elegy in D Minor

Forgive me, Anna,
for not attending your funeral,
for pretending I was ill,
for hiding in my study,
sipping the brandy you gave me
at two o’clock, when the service began.
For not answering the phone for a week afterward,
for repeating your name softly,
then louder and louder to no one,
for this hollow feeling,
for these apologies,
forgive me, please.
That I should wish you alive today,
hammering out tunes on an off-key piano,
music as old as those bleak rented rooms;
that I should long for one more hour
trading smokes and jazz and histories:
these are thoughts too futile
to pursue.
Only forgive please the stillness,
the evening’s steady drift toward blindness.
Forgive me the inability
to refrain from words
at a time like this.

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Listen to the actor Barbara Feldman read “Elegy in D Minor”

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…..Holly Peppe is a leading authority and literary executor for the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Her critical essays about the poet’s life and work appear in the Penguin Classics, Harper’s, and Yale University Press editions of her poems.

…..In addition to her literary work, Peppe had a successful 30-year career as a global media, PR, and crisis communications strategist, representing clients in education, arts, health, gender equality, and human rights. She spent eight years in developing countries with ORBIS International before founding her own PR firm in Manhattan, working with a diverse clientele including the UN Office for Children and Armed Conflict and New York Theatre Workshop.

…..In earlier years, she taught poetry and literature at the high school and college level and served for three years as Director of the English Department at the American College of Rome, Italy. She also taught music at an elementary school in rural Vermont and attended Woodstock, a treasured memory from her hippie days.

Click here to visit Holly Peppe’s website

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Saging Not Ageing, by N. Chamchoun [Alien Buddha Press]

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…..“Sageing Not Ageing” by N. Chamchoun is a poetic journey through the complexities of existence, exploring the tapestry of life’s experiences with lyrical grace and profound insight.

…..In this captivating collection, Chamchoun invites readers to delve into the depths of identity, cultural heritage and the passage of time. Through vivid imagery and evocative storytelling, she navigates the intricate landscapes of memory, love, and loss, painting a portrait of resilience and wisdom.

…..From the vibrant streets of London to the sun-kissed shores of Morocco, Chamchoun’s words resonate with authenticity and raw emotion, inviting readers to embrace the beauty of impermanence and the power of self-discovery. “Sageing Not Ageing” is a testament to the enduring spirit of the soul, celebrating the richness of life’s journey and the timeless wisdom found within.

…..The collection consists of 78 poems and 123 pages

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A poem from the book:

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L’artiste et la Poétesse

See how she runs to the flame.
As the moth to luminous things.
Knowing her wings may be singed.
Filaments of light, a Pied Piper’s tune

She is brave and and foolhardy,
Yearning for the rage of the furnace,
Meeting its inferno head first.
Smirking as she sips her Bacardi.

Seeking ruinous pleasure.
Rising out of yesterday’s ashes.
Her voice drips like molasses,
She beckons the seeker of treasure.

He, giving charge to her power.
His tone, a call to love.
The hand and the glove,
Each form, shaped for the other.

Vibrating, a woman empowered.
Surging with confidence and allure,
She pours back into the source
for him to savour and devour.

His hands tease such delicate strokes.
She is the canvas of his passion
He works with ardent compulsion,
An explosion of the joy she invokes.

She watches him from her desk.
Painting him with her mastery of words.
Each immortalising the paradise shared.
The celebration their hands express.

She woos him with her artistry of language.
He, with the hues of his soul,
Drinking from the other’s bowl.
Their movements, louche and languid.

Les amoureux muse.
Oil and colour.
Pen and paper.
Mixing as they fuse.

Radiating, he smiles, “She is called My Soul’s Twin,
Tell me what you think, darling poétesse?”
He soars on the pleasure her eyes express,
She hums “Come my twin, let our souls burn through our skin.”

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Nayma Chamchoun is a British Moroccan self-taught writer and poet. Her writing is influenced by her cultural duality. She is interested in female voices in the diaspora community, the challenges they face within both communities and the taboos around mental health within their ancestral communities.

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Finding Sibelius, by Joel Glickman [Aji Press]

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…..Joel Glickman’s most recent book of poetry is a slender volume titled Finding Sibelius,  a chapbook encompassing a dozen poems all having to do with music over a range of styles, perspectives, and experiences.

…..Joel, over a long career and beyond that in retirement from his post at Northland College, has been a classical clarinetist, orchestral conductor, jazz saxophonist,  jazz band leader, lecturer, singer-songwriter and five string banjo player in the folk music realm.  In these poems on music and musicians, pursued from varying perspectives, he opens with a piece inspired by the Finnish composer, Jean Sibelius, which leads to other forays after Bach, Chopin, Mozart; jazz giant Sonny Rollins; and sundry cowboy, blues and folk tunes.

…..The hope of the author here was not to be comprehensive, but that listeners or practitioners across the vast territories of musical tastes and experience will find at least a poem or two in this compilation that will grab and shake them a bit, and more importantly, think about, rethink or reconnect with the music that lives inside them.

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A poem from the book:

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Dink’s Blues and Drum Fills

One of these days and it won’t be long,
You’re going to call my name, and I’ll be gone.
Fare thee well, oh honey, fare thee well.

I’m whistling a tune about
a woman’s broken heart,
down a long and empty
hallway, just to hear it
move itself along,
floating on ahead of me
underneath the low ceiling
like a dark blue kite bumping
the bottoms of cobbled clouds
as it passes by the doorway
of a girl whose apron strings
will not tie anymore.

Then there is no more music
all through the skittering noise
of afternoon and night, till
well past bedtime, when
the mouse who has been stealing
kibble from the dog, now rolls
his stash across the floor above us.
And on the back stoop, something
big enough to stand and tip over
the recycle bin stops by again,
looking for a meal, and once more
it’s all for naught.

The scrubbed tin cans and bottles
sound to me a bit like Max Roach
as they tumble on the back porch
long after the woman called Dink
shared a song about some man
as she did her husband’s laundry
in Greater Calhoun Bayou
while he worked on the levee.
Up here, a skunk or raccoon
shambles away, still hungry,
in the atonal darkness.
The world is full of sadness.

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Joel Glickman

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Music, Words, and Nationalism, by Marco Katz Montiel [Palgrave/Macmillan]

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…..Music, Words and Nationalism: National Anthems and Songs in the Modern Era  considers the concept of nationalism from 1780 to 2020 through anthems and national songs as symbolic and representative elements of the national identity of individuals, peoples, or collectivities. The volume shows that both the words and music of these works reveal a great deal about the defining features of a nation, its political and cultural history, and its self-perception. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach that provides a better understanding of the role of national anthems and songs in the expression of national identities and nationalistic goals. From this perspective, the relationship between hymns and political contexts, their own symbolic content (both literary and musical) and the role of specific hymns in the construction of national sentiments are surveyed.

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Erstwhile salsa trombonist Marco Katz Montiel composes poetry and prose in Spanish, English, and musical notes. His essays, poems, and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Jerry Jazz Musician, English Studies in Latin America, Camino Real, WestWard Quarterly, Lowestoft Chronicle, and in the anthologies Cartas de desamor y otras adicciones  (Univ. Alcalá),  There’s No Place  (Renaissance Press),  and Volume IV of the Capital City Press Anthology.  Marco has two poems, “Adiós Vàlencia” and “Descarga del año viejo (un son montuno desde el punto de vista de unos músicos boricuas),” in the current issue of Copihue Poetry.

Click here for his website

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Betweem Holocausts,  by Duane Vorhees [Hog Press]

 

A poem from the book:

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We Gamblers of Fate are Played by the Jugglers of Time 

The silence of echoes is too loud to hear.
The excess deer was culled
before the hunt was closed.
We race toward that precipice we screened ourselves from.
Lazarus’ miracle
just delayed the dust.
We are partners of the same condition.
Though odds up and fall
our lots have been tossed.
The future always lies to us, but so does the past.

You get the apple
filling — You get the crust
Paths twist and twist no matter which we pick.
You get the pedestal —
and You get the bust.
Rivers have many tributaries but only one result.
You get the sadist’s fuel,
You the holocaust.

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An American poet living in Thailand, all Duane Vorhees’ books include 100+ poems in a variety of styles, on subjects and themes that range from personal and philosophical to historical and romantic.

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Captcha This!, by JW Wood [AN Editions]

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…..In 2015, J.W. Wood gave up his day job and disappeared to homestead acreage on an island in British Columbia, Canada – armed only with an axe, some tools and the determination to free himself. Seven years in the wilderness gave him plenty of time to write – and Captcha This! is the result: a compendium of short satires that spares no-one. From pompous investment bankers, vacuous fame-hunters, feudal tech overlords and invasive grammar-nazi software through to government by bogus statistic and further denizens of today’s digital abyss – all are given a not-so-gentle skewering.

J.W. Wood’s stories evince a gift for the quotidian, employing brilliant conceits and mischievous turns of phrase which enrich the writing at every point. Capturing the frustration of curtailed lives and the grim horrors of the corporate world, Wood presents a meta-fictional universe in which the rich realise their folly and we control computers, not the other way round.”

– Julian Stannard, award-winning poet, author: The University of Bliss (Sagging Meniscus, 2024)

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J.W. Wood is a British writer currently living in North America. His work is widely  published in US, UK and Canadian anthologies,  and in many magazines around the world.   He is also the author of several published collections of poetry and a novel selected for film rights auction at the Rome Film Festival.

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Three books by M.G. Stephens

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…..JESUS’ DOG by M. G. Stephens (Paycock Press, 2024), stories

…..COME ON, EILEEN by M. G. Stephens (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025), linked stories, about an Irish poet named Eileen Coole who meets, falls in love, and marries the jazz musician and political activist, Santiago Santa. Because the FBI tries to frame and implicate Santa in a Black Panther murder in Oakland, the Santas flee the country and wind up spending twenty years in Algiers, Algeria. Eventually, free of drugs and clean in Paris, Santiago dies of AIDS and Eileen moves to London, where many of the stories are set, with her remembering different events in their long relationship.

…..POPEYE, UNCHAINED by M. G. Stephens, with collages by Brooklyn artist Archie Rand (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025). There are eighty-five mostly sonnets, unrhyming but in blank verse form, about Popeye and his companions. Archie Rand has a collage for each poem.

 

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M. G. Stephens

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Milestones by Charles Joseph Albert

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A poem from the book:

 

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Louche

There is something louche
about the way the cat
only jumps on the kitchen counter
with no humans around—
she knows she isn’t allowed.

Scientists think that free will
doesn’t exist; humans only
obey some Neurological Coding
invisible to us, hidden deep within.

“There is no rational explanation
for being able to choose freely.”

I choose to not believe them.

When I’ve ignored her for too long,
my dog will fish a sock
from the hamper
and bring it to me, ears low,
tail between her legs—
knowing full well it’s wrong,
but it’s what she will do
to get my attention.

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Charles Joseph Albert writes poetry and fiction in San Jose, California, where he also plays with the South Bay Bones, a trombone choir. He has published a dozen stories and six dozen poems in a variety of journals and e-zines around the web, and sixteen collections are available on Amazon.

 

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The Cabin at the End of the World, by Douglas Cole [Unsolicited Press]

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…..A 2024 Best Book Awards Winner for Urban Poetry, and Finalist in both the Narrative and Contemporary Poetry categories, The Cabin at the End of the World is Douglas Cole’s first poetry collection to explore the prose poem. Inspired by Charles Baudelaire, Octavio Paz, Claudia Rankine and James Wright, Cole tells a tale of the world in fragmentary, dreamlike poems rich in musical language that retains a mystery bringing readers back again to see what shimmers at the edge of the page. If the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon, then these poems are visions wrought in moonlight.

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A poem from the book:

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A Game of Chicken

When the train still came through town along Sand Point Way
up at the north end of the lake, we used to swing out on a rope
tied to a tree branch above the tracks in a game called Chicken,
and one boy named Stuart who was often hounded by the pack,
timid, backed away up the muddy hillside until taunted one day
he at last took hold of the frayed rope just as the engine passed,
and we watched him arc out like we had done but at the point
directly over the train he turned to face us—and what can I say
about that expression and the way it seemed like a final blow
as he let go or slipped—who could know—and was carried off,
as we scattered fast and only heard the rest of the story later
on the news but among us we never said a word about it ever.

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Douglas Cole has published six collections of poetry and The White Field, winner of the American Fiction Award. His work has appeared in several anthologies as well as journals such as The Chicago Quarterly Review, Poetry International, The Galway Review, Bitter Oleander, Chiron, Louisiana Literature, Slipstream, as well Spanish translations of work (translated by Maria Del Castillo Sucerquia) in La Cabra Montes. His series Trading Fours with Douglas Cole is a regular feature on Jerry Jazz Musician.

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Overlays (Scored Poems), by Sean Howard [Gaspereau Press, Canada]

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…..In Overlays, Sean Howard employs experimental, magpie strategies that draw fresh poems from the deep wells of two related texts – John Thompson’s influential poetry collection  Stilt Jack  (1978)  and Peter Sanger’s  Sea Run  (2023),  a critical commentary on Thompson’s mesmerically allusive and elusive ghazals. By mixing images and diction from these source texts with his own reserve of memories, dreams and associations, Howard opens a fresh, lucidly turbulent correspondence between literary elements, the shapes, sounds and silences of his poems creating a palimpsest score.

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Two poems from the book:

 

 

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Heights

The lost art of being
crookedly exact. (Prose

Pentecost, tongue sand-
wiched.) The grandeur that

proved deadly: the ravenous
Tower, far cries from the mar-

ble eyes of Caesar. Dreams
not always kindly remind-

ing: the real tragedy,
low comedy, no

heights to fall
from. Faust-

feast of
Progress, God’s

blood baked in:  words
to ward these woes? Yet

the gazelle (grace in the maze)
seeks a parley with the lion

psychosis, gnawing
the real to the

bone

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Winds

Mindwind, quickword
if I may: now I  know,

the something rotten
in the Yeats? Ha!,

nothing on the
stove, won’t

be long
now:

the
empty

swing, cold keys
of music? (But poetic

process all there is, never
done divining…) Holding

the line of silence, moon
shadow from the silver

cross. Passim strange:
modern toffee on the

tongue, Elizabethan
apples still freshen

the mind. O for
quiet spirits

now, yes
pour

cold
water, for here

I am leaving  the
wind in the

rain

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Sean Howard is the author of six collections of poetry in Canada, most recently  Trinity: Tribute Sequences for Robert Graves  (2022).  His work has been widely published in Canada, the US, UK, and elsewhere, and featured in  The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (2017).  Howard is a peace researcher and activist, and adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University, Nova Scotia. He lives in the fishing village of Main-à-Dieu, Cape Breton.

 

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They Were Horrible Cooks, by Allison Whittenberg  [Cornerstone Press]

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…..A husband reads his dead wife’s poems to a spare crowd, while cannibals go hungry with no one to invite to dinner. Whether bearing witness to the torment of a mother who drowns her own children, or to the quiet sorrows of daughters mourning their mother by fingering the thread of her old coats, They Were Horrible Cooks never fails to illuminate crucial truths at the center of human experience.

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“With honesty, humanity, and wit, They Were Horrible Cooks intermixes historical themes and everyday traumas, boldly laying bare the realities and ironies of a dog-eat-dog world.”

-Tiya Miles, author of All that She Carried, National Book Award Winner

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“Allison Whittenberg embraces the topic of family though she’s haunted by memories-she gives us little jewels of poems, many that I savored.”

-Karen Loeb, author of Jump Rope Queen

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“There is pain in many of these emotional snapshots, but there is also joy. This is a collection that reads easily and rewards rereading often.”

-Don Riggs, author of Bilateral Asymmetry

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A poem from the book:

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Truce

For the girl abused by her father,
The terrible is the beautiful
In between, he showed range
Embracing a new word from the family dictionary:
Fun

A pumpkin nearly half her size that he let her pick

They came home from the patch and clawed out its guts

He put the face in the window
Without a recipe, they baked happiness on that stunted, gray afternoon
A can of condensed milk and molasses

The outside, cold as reality
Inside, warm. Warm as television

They laughed when the pie turned out to be a horrid tasting neon orange mess
Because that day, they were not tragic figures;
They were horrible cooks.

 

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Born in Philadelphia and educated in New York and Wisconsin, Allison Whittenberg is an award winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Driving with a Poetic License and They Were Horrible Cooks are her collections of poetry. Her favorite singers are Betty Carter, Billie Holiday, and Lee Wiley.

 

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Blood Will Out, and other strange tales, by David Rudd [Shakspeare Editorial]

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…..This is my first collection of stories, taken from the fifty or so I’ve published in various magazines. Though I’ve written in different genres, I was advised to theme the collection, so I’ve concentrated on tales with an uncanny element. Although, despite the title, there’s hardly any blood. I like to think the 21 stories are more disconcerting in a more subtle way, in the vein of M.R. James, H.G. Wells or Robert Aickman, exploring what stands outside that narrow bandwidth of “reality”: off grid, off piste, off the rails. However, though the stories aim to disturb, many of them also have a humorous side, the comic being another effective way of troubling strait-laced reality.

…..For example, there’s the contemporary vampire who challenges the orthodox Dracula stereotype; or the student haunted by a gold prospector encountered in the Montana hills, who helps the lad profit on the stock exchange; or the travelling salesman who keeps encountering an old-world farm lying just off a modern highway complex. Regrettably, in this collection the only thing missing is Jazz!

…..The book is available in paperback and ebook versions.

 

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Dr. David Rudd is an emeritus professor of literature who wrote academic prose for 40 years before letting his imagination run free.

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Still Motion/Poems and Photographs, by Jianqing Zheng and Leo Touchet [Photo Circle Press]

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…..Still Motion is a collection of ekphrastic poems after Leo Touchet’s photographs published by Photo Circle Press in December 2024. Leo’s photographs present facets of the beauty of dunes and New Orleans jazz that are hard to resist when their visual charms fascinate a viewer. The composition of his photos exhibits beautiful shapes made effective by light and shadow with a tension of fluidity and tranquility of the dunes as well as jazz funerals and festivals that inspire ekphrastic writing. That’s why I cultivated an artistic imagination in his poetry writing after Leo’s photographs.

…..Poetic ekphrasis engages communication between imagination and creativity and helps one focus on things, not ideas. Ekphrastic writing is not a retelling of what we see in artworks; it concerns an interaction of the senses, a creation from the original art. Since ekphrastic poetry is a reinterpretation that experiments with imagination, language, and synesthesia in its creative process, it is hoped that the poems in this duet are good company to Leo’s photographs.

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A poem from the book:

 

Questions from Seeing

—Eureka Valley Sand Dunes #0758

The background shadow looks like
a mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh

and the foreground sand ripples like
a pyramid labyrinth in darkness.

If ancient burial means eternal peace,
why should it be disturbed?

But after the buried is unearthed
for research or exhibition, what is seen

after a mummy is unwrapped cautiously?
An object for preservation study or

a body as dry as a dead Joshua tree?
As you walk near a mummy case

in the museum, do you shudder
at those big, painted, and staring eyes?

Who has a stronger desire to see?
A researcher, a museumgoer, or

the dry mummy who may be able
to silently watch us doing whatnot?

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The book can be found on Amazon by clicking here

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Jianqing Zheng is the author of  The Dog Years of Reeducation  (Madville Publishing, 2023)  and A Way of Looking  (Silverfish Review Press, 2021).  He teaches at a historically black institution in the Mississippi Delta.

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Maverick Secrets. Decoding Early TV Westerns, by Catherine Lee.

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…..Maverick Secrets. Decoding Early TV Westerns is Catherine Lee’s 2nd self-published dramatic script. Its characters’ opinions are documented in Works Cited and Research Consulted bibliographies. Also included is the poem “Majority Rules.”

…..At a city-run Center in San Antonio, senior friends play Texas Hold’Em poker and chat. They overhear an old Western being broadcast. Discussion turns to how Westerns unconsciously influenced them as children to hold biased attitudes about cultural minorities, women’s roles, and openly-carried firearms.

…..Bonnie, a Jewish, divorced woman, moved to South Texas from back East and is fascinated by the contrasted cultures. Mashawn is a Black man, married guardian of his pre-teen grandson whose father is incarcerated. Keith, of Irish extraction, is native Texan, a married, retired military man. In the service, he developed passions for gun ownership and game hunting, and became an expert card player. Valinda is a Black, single, wheelchair-bound diabetic woman, who in younger days danced on TV’s Soul Train. Her daughter was shot to death by an abusive boyfriend. Lupe, a married Mexican-American woman, has lived with her family in Tejas for many generations, since the first migrations of Canary Islanders and Spaniards in the 1600s.

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Catherine Lee is a widely published neo-Beat who reads solo and performs with improvising musicians “on poem.” Among these were joint gigs (1986-87) with poet/hipster tedjoans, whose “Jazz is my religion” griot mantra continues to inspires her.

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Tragedy in the Arugula Aisle, by Charlie Brice [Arroyo Seco Press]

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Poetry from the book:

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Jazz Haikus

Fifty years ago
on a sofa I held her breast;
some enchanted evening.

At dawn my sweet wife
is in tremendous pain;
sweet embraceable you.

Billy Strayhorn drove
these rain-soaked Pittsburgh streets;
a daydream for me.

Like a dark lake her
black hair pooled on my pillow;
a love supreme.

For fifty years my
woman held me close in love;
night and day and night.

Pain medication
my chemical salvation;
you go to my head.

Autumn leaves skitter
along dusty, lonely, streets;
thunder before rain.

Our love so intense
we are alone together;
a noisy nightclub.

Even in high school
your silky voice made me cry;
my funny valentine.

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Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His sixth full-length poetry collection is Pinnacles of Hope (Impspired Books, 2022). His poetry has been nominated three times for both the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, The Paterson Literary Review, Impspired Magazine, Salamander Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.

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Flight Risk: Poems and Translations, by DB Jonas [Kelsay Books]l

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.…..However far from home their insights and imagery may deposit us, his poems keep us firmly grounded in poetic tradition, always within earshot of Rilke, Yeats, or the Chinese Classics. Flight Risk never fails to endow the insubstantial with substance, and to pulse with the music of lived life.

–  Johnny Payne, author of Midnight Sutra, Ostraca, Heaven of Ashes, and Vassal

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A poem from the book:

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Flight Risk
………….on a Joseph Cornell Owl

She occupies a mental space
reserved for disappearances.
In your mind’s eye, she’s only
barely there. In hers, you’re
something that has never been.

Her dark regard’s a one-way
street; this ice-blue reverie’s
her native element. Her talons
grasp the night she gazes on,
an iron grip devoid of sentiment.

Your limping stanzas try to own
the fierce poetics of her stare,
to seize the silences you think
you hear. Although in silence
she’s already flown, her absence
doesn’t leave your thought alone.

 

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DB Jonas, a frequent contributor to Jerry Jazz Musician, is an American poet living in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico. He is the author of  Tarantula Season and Other Poems and the newly released  Flight Risk, Poems and Translations  (Kelsay Books 2025),  both of which are available on Amazon. Other works are accessible at jonaspoetry.com.

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The Vigil, by Peter J. Dellolio  [Type 18 Books]

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…..“The Vigil” is about a man (Ralph Unda) who is the lighthouse keeper on Little Brewster Island in Massachusetts.  His young daughter (Georgia) suffers from schizophrenia that takes over her mind after she dreams of a seagull flying into the lighthouse during an overnight storm.  By coincidence, she finds a dead seagull on the rocks the next morning.

 

…..Her delusional beliefs convince her that the dream caused the seagull’s death.  Until her death by suicide at the age of twenty-three, her father tries desperately to find a cure for her schizophrenia.  Losing touch with reality, he keeps a “vigil” over the sea, hoping to somehow rescue her.  

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Brooklyn resident Peter J. Dellolio’s poetry, prose-poems, fiction, short plays, art work, and critical essays have been published in over 80 literary magazines, journals, and anthologies.  Three poetry collections have been published since 2018.  Chapters from his critical study of Alfred Hitchcock  (Hitchcock’s Cinematic World: Shocks of Perception and the Collapse of the Rational)  published in The Midwest Quarterly Literature/Film Quarterly, Kinema, Flickhead, and North Dakota Quarterly have been published since 2006.  His paintings and 3D works offer abstract images of famous people in all walks of life who have died tragically at a young age.  His art can be seen on his website by clicking here.

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Click here to read previous editions of the  Community Bookshelf

 

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Click for:

The Sunday Poem

More poetry on Jerry Jazz Musician

Bluesette,” Salvatore Difalco’s winning story in the 67th Jerry Jazz Musician Short Fiction Contest

More short fiction on Jerry Jazz Musician

Information about how to submit your poetry or short fiction

Subscribe to the (free) Jerry Jazz Musician quarterly newsletter

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Publisher’s Notes

Creatives – “This is our time!“…A Letter from the Publisher...A call to action to take on political turmoil through the use of our creativity as a way to help our fellow citizens “pierce the mundane to find the marvelous.”

In This Issue

Announcing the book publication of Kinds of Cool: An Interactive Collection of Jazz Poetry...The first Jerry Jazz Musician poetry anthology published in book form includes 90 poems by 47 poets from all over the world, and features the brilliant artwork of Marsha Hammel and a foreword by Jack Kerouac’s musical collaborator David Amram. The collection is “interactive” (and quite unique) because it invites readers – through the use of QR codes printed on many of the book’s pages – to link to selected readings by the poets themselves, as well as to historic audio and video recordings (via YouTube) relevant to many of the poems, offering a holistic experience with the culture of jazz.

The Sunday Poem

Mariefize009, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons


“Miles” by J. Stephen Whitney


The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work....

J. Stephen Whitney reads his poem at its conclusion


Click here to read previous editions of The Sunday Poem

Feature

“What one song best represents your expectations for 2025?” Readers respond...When asked to name the song that best represents their expectations for 2025, respondents often cited songs of protest and of the civil rights era, but so were songs of optimism and appreciation, including Bob Thiele and George David Weiss’ composition “What a Wonderful World,” made famous by Louis Armstrong, who first performed it live in 1959. The result is a fascinating and extensive outlook on the upcoming year.

Interview

photo by Brian McMillen
Interview with Phillip Freeman, author of In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor...The author discusses Cecil Taylor – the most eminent free jazz musician of his era, whose music marked the farthest boundary of avant-garde jazz.

Feature

photo of Rudy Van Gelder via Blue Note Records
“Rudy Van Gelder: Jazz Music’s Recording Angel” – by Joel Lewis...For over 60 years, the legendary recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder devoted himself to the language of sound. And although he recorded everything from glee clubs to classical music, he was best known for recording jazz – specifically the musicians associated with Blue Note and Prestige records. Joel Lewis writes about his impact on the sound of jazz, and what has become of his Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio.

Poetry

photo of Charlie Parker by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress; Design by Rhonda R. Dorsett
Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 2025 Jazz Poetry Calendar...Jerrice J. Baptiste’s 12-month 2025 calendar of jazz poetry winds through the upcoming year with her poetic grace while inviting us to wander through music by the likes of Hoagy Carmichael, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sarah Vaughan, Melody Gardot and Charlie Parker.

Playlist

“Sextets: The Joy of Six” – a playlist by Bob Hecht...The cover of the 1960 debut album by the Jazztet, co-founded by the trumpeter Art Farmer and the tenor saxophonist Benny Golson, and which always featured a trombonist and a piano-bass-drums rhythm section. Golson wrote much of the music, but “Hi-Fly” – a tune featured on Bob Hecht’s two-hour playlist devoted to sextets – was written by pianist Randy Weston, and appears on the 1960 album Big City Sounds.

Interview

Interview with Jonathon Grasse: author of Jazz Revolutionary: The Life and Music of Eric Dolphy....The multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy was a pioneer of avant-garde technique. His life cut short in 1964 at the age of 36, his brilliant career touched fellow musical artists, critics, and fans through his innovative work as a composer, sideman and bandleader. Jonathon Grasse’s Jazz Revolutionary is a significant exploration of Dolphy’s historic recorded works, and reminds readers of the complexity of his biography along the way. Grasse discusses his book in a December, 2024 interview.

Feature

Book Excerpt from In the Brewing Luminous: The Life and Music of Cecil Taylor, by Philip Freeman...In anticipation of my soon-to-be-published interview with Philip Freeman, who authored the first full-length biography of Cecil Taylor, In the Brewing Luminous, the author has provided readers of Jerry Jazz Musician the opportunity to read his book’s introduction.

Feature

Excerpts from David Rife’s Jazz Fiction: Take Two – Vol. 11: “Chick” and “Hen” Lit...A substantial number of novels and stories with jazz music as a component of the story have been published over the years, and the scholar David J. Rife has written short essay/reviews of them. In this 11th edition, Rife writes about the “chicks” (energetic women, attractive, and open to experience) and “hens” (older women who have either buried or lost a loved one, and who seem content with their lives) who are at the center of stories with jazz within its theme.

Interview

photo by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress
A Black History Month Profile: The legendary author Richard Wright...In a 2002 Jerry Jazz Musician interview, Richard Wright biographer Hazel Rowley discusses the life and times of legendary author Richard Wright, whose work included the novels Native Son andBlack Boy

Feature

On the Turntable — The “Best Of the ‘Best Of’” in 2024 jazz recordings...Our annual year-end compilation of jazz albums oft mentioned by a wide range of critics as being the best of 2024

In Memoriam

photo via Pexels.com
“Departures to the Final Arms Hotel in 2024” – poetic tributes, by Terrance Underwood...2024 produced its share of losses of legendary jazz musicians. Terrance Underwood pays poetic homage to a handful who have touched his life, imagining their admittance to the Final Arms Hotel, a destination he introduces in his prelude.

Community

Stewart Butterfield, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Community Bookshelf #4...“Community Bookshelf” is a twice-yearly space where writers who have been published on Jerry Jazz Musician can share news about their recently authored books and/or recordings. This edition includes information about books published within the last six months or so (September, 2024 – March, 2025)

Feature

Trading Fours, with Douglas Cole, No. 23: “The Wave”...In this edition of an occasional series of the writer’s poetic interpretations of jazz recordings and film, Douglas’ poem is written partly as a reference to the Antonio Carlos Jobin song “Wave,” but mostly to get in the famed Japanese artist Hokusai’s idea of the wave as being a huge, threatening thing. (The poem initially sprang from listening to Cal Tjader’s “Along Came Mary”).

Short Fiction

Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons/blur effect added
Short Fiction Contest-winning story #67 — “Bluesette,” by Salvatore Difalco...The author’s award-winning story is a semi-satirical mood piece about a heartbroken man in Europe listening to a recording by the harmonica player Toots Thielemans while under the influence of a mind-altering substance.

Interview

Interview with James Kaplan, author of 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lost Empire of Cool...The esteemed writer tells a vibrant story about the jazz world before, during, and after the 1959 recording of Kind of Blue, and how the album’s three genius musicians came together, played together, and grew together (and often apart) throughout the experience.

Feature

photo of Lester Young by William Gottlieb/Library of Congress
Jazz History Quiz #179...Throughout his career, this saxophonist was known as the “Vice Prez” because he sounded so similar to “Prez,” Lester Young (pictured). Who was he?

Community

Nominations for the Pushcart Prize XLIX...Announcing the six writers nominated for the Pushcart Prize v. XLIX, whose work was published in Jerry Jazz Musician during 2024.

Publisher’s Notes

photo by Rhonda Dorsett
On turning 70, and contemplating the future of Jerry Jazz Musician...

Feature

“Are Jazz-Hop Instrumentals Jazz?” – an observation (and playlist) by Anthony David Vernon...Google “what is jazz-hop?” and the AI overview describes it is “a subgenre of hip-hop that combines jazz and hip-hop music. It developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” In Mr. Vernon’s observation, he makes the case that it is also a subgenre of jazz.

Community

Notes on Bob Hecht’s book, Stolen Moments: A Photographer’s Personal Journey...Some thoughts on a new book of photography by frequent Jerry Jazz Musician contributing writer Bob Hecht

Art

“The Jazz Dive” – the art of Allen Mezquida...The artist's work is inspired by the counterculture music from the 1950s and 60s, resulting in art “that resonates with both eyes and ears.” It is unique and creative and worth a look…

True Jazz Stories

Columbia Records; via Wikimedia Commons
“An Evening with Michael Bloomfield” – a true blues story by David Eugene Everard...The author recounts his experience meeting and interviewing the great blues guitarist Mike Bloomfield in 1974…

Art

photo of Joseph Jarman by Giovanni Piesco
The Photographs of Giovanni Piesco: Reggie Workman, Steve Swallow, and Joseph Jarman...Beginning in 1990, the noted photographer Giovanni Piesco began taking backstage photographs of many of the great musicians who played in Amsterdam’s Bimhuis, that city’s main jazz venue which is considered one of the finest in the world. Jerry Jazz Musician will occasionally publish portraits of jazz musicians that Giovanni has taken over the years. This edition features 1999 photographs of the bassists Reggie Workman and Steve Swallow, and the multi-instrumentalist Joseph Jarman.

Short Fiction

photo via PxHere
“The Magic” – a story by Mark Bruce...Most bands know how to make music. They learn to play together so that it sounds good and maybe even get some gigs. Most bands know that you have your chord progressions and your 4/4 beat and your verses and bridges. Some bands even have a guy (or a woman, like Chrissy Hynde) who writes songs. So what gives some bands the leg up into the Top 40?

Contributing Writers

Click the image to view the writers, poets and artists whose work has been published on Jerry Jazz Musician, and find links to their work

Coming Soon

An interview with Ricky Riccardi, author of Stomp Off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. Also, a new Jazz History Quiz, and lots of short fiction; poetry; photography; interviews; playlists; and much more in the works...

Interview Archive

Ella Fitzgerald/IISG, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Click to view the complete 25-year archive of Jerry Jazz Musician interviews, including those recently published with Judith Tick on Ella Fitzgerald (pictured),; Laura Flam and Emily Sieu Liebowitz on the Girl Groups of the 60's; Tad Richards on Small Group Swing; Stephanie Stein Crease on Chick Webb; Brent Hayes Edwards on Henry Threadgill; Richard Koloda on Albert Ayler; Glenn Mott on Stanley Crouch; Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom on Eubie Blake; Richard Brent Turner on jazz and Islam; Alyn Shipton on the art of jazz; Shawn Levy on the original queens of standup comedy; Travis Atria on the expatriate trumpeter Arthur Briggs; Kitt Shapiro on her life with her mother, Eartha Kitt; Will Friedwald on Nat King Cole; Wayne Enstice on the drummer Dottie Dodgion; the drummer Joe La Barbera on Bill Evans; Philip Clark on Dave Brubeck; Nicholas Buccola on James Baldwin and William F. Buckley; Ricky Riccardi on Louis Armstrong; Dan Morgenstern and Christian Sands on Erroll Garner; Maria Golia on Ornette Coleman.