The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology, [Hardcover]

Sascha Feinstein (Editor), Yusef Komunyakaa (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1996

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, Martín 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.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Following up their wonderful jazz poetry anthology, editors Sascha Feinstein and Yusuf Komunyakaa deliver the goods again. Derek Walcott, June Jordan, and Gwendolyn Brooks all weigh in with fine poems, but my favorite this go-round is Rita Dove's "Canary," which includes these lines: "Billie Holiday's burned voice / had as many shadows as lights, / a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano, / the gardenia her signature under that ruined face." These images tell a lot of the story of jazz as an art form. Life is painful, but music is solace, catharsis, and transcendence. So is poetry. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

As an augmentation of 1991's Jazz Anthology, the Second Set is as impetuous and bent as a Thelonious Monk song, and, in a fusty, academic sort of way, at least half as enjoyable. It should especially please the jazz culture connoisseur. Feinstein and Komunyakaa, in trying to make up for their first collection's omissions, have created an exquisite mix of poetry, history and personal takes on the literary implications of the musical form. The book tells a unique, intertwined history of jazz and poetry, embracing poets as diverse as Hart Crane, Ntozake Shange, Rita Dove, William Matthews and Lorenzo Thomas. In all, about 100 mostly contemporary poets are included. As a group, their poems exhibit certain be-bop qualities: throughout, we get jarring, overshot allusions to musicians, writers and songs, as well as a building, panoramic retrospective of jazz greats like Monk, Chet Baker, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Billie Holiday. The editors have most certainly achieved their goal of inspiring "engaging discussions on the nature of jazz poetry."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr (December 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 025333053X
• ISBN-13: 978-0253330536
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,910,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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