DANCING
(poems)
Corinth Books, New York, 1969
(out of print)

SNAKES
(novel)
Holt Rinehart Winston, New York, 1970
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1971
Dell Laurel Edition, New York, 1972
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1980
(out of print)

THE SONG TURNING BACK INTO ITSELF
(poems)
Holt Rinehart Winston, New York, 1971
(out of print)

WHO IS ANGELINA?
(novel)
Holt Rinehart Winston, New York, 1976
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1978
University of California Paperback, Berkeley & London, 1996
(out of print)

CHI È ANGELINA?
(Italian translation by Luciano Federighi),
Editoriale Jacabook, Milano
Email: lettori@jacabook.it
(out of print)

GEOGRAPHY OF THE NEAR PAST
(poems)
Holt Rinehart Winston, New York, 1976
First edition hardcover copy inscribed to poet Denise Levertov selling at $100 (Wessel and Lieberman)
[out of print]

SITTING PRETTY
(novel)
Holt Rinehart Winston, New York, 1976
New American Library, New York, 1977
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1986
(out of print)

PARLA SITTING PRETTY
(Italian translation by Luciano Federighi)
Jacabook, Milano, 1986
Email: lettori@jacabook.it
(out of print)

ASK ME NOW
(novel)
McGraw Hill, New York, 1980
Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1980
(out of print)

BODIES & SOUL
(musical memoirs)
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1981
(out of print)

THE BLUES DON’T CHANGE
New and Selected Poems
Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1982
(out of print)

KINDS OF BLUE
(musical memoirs)
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1984
(out of print)

THINGS AIN’T WHAT THEY USED TO BE
(musical memoirs)
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1987
(out of print)

SEDUCTION BY LIGHT
(novel)
Delacorte/Seymour Lawrence, New York, 1988
Mandarin Paperback edition, London, 1989
(out of print)

HEAVEN
Collected Poems 1956-1990
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1992
(out of print)

STRAIGHT NO CHASER
(poetry chapbook)
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley 1994
(out of print)

DROWNING IN THE SEA OF LOVE
(musical memoirs)
The Ecco Press; Hopewell, New Jersey, 1995
(out of print)

CONJUGAL VISITS
(poetry chapbook)
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 1996
(out of print)

THE SOUND OF DREAMS REMEMBERED:
Poems 1990-2000
Creative Arts Book Co., Berkeley, 2001 (This edition is out of print; click on title to find used copies)

Loveletter Editions re-issue, Berkeley, 2006
(in print)
$15
Available from Small Press Distribution

Co-Edited by Al Young:

YARDBIRD LIVES!
(with Ishmael Reed)
Grove Press, New York, 1978
(out of print)

CALAFÍA
The California Poetry
(with Ishmael Reed, Bob Callahan, Shawn Wong, et al)
Y’Bird Books, Berkeley, 1979
(out of print)

THE LITERATURE OF CALIFORNIA
Volume 1
(with Jack Hicks, James D. Houston, and Maxine Hong Kingston)
University of California Press, 2000, and 2002)
(in print)

Edited by Al Young:

AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE
A Brief Introduction and Anthology
The Harper Collins Literary Mosaic Series
HarperCollins College Publishers, New York, 1996
Addison Wesley Longman, New York, 2001
(currently in print)

COASTAL NIGHTS AND INLAND AFTERNOONS: POEMS 2001-2006
The Poetry of Al Young
Angel City Press,
Santa Monica, 2006
(currently in print)

Click here for Google Roundup of BOOKS BY AL YOUNG

________________________________________________________

]]> http://alyoung.org/index.php/2010/01/02/al-youngs-backlist/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/index.php/2009/03/03/new-cd-the-sea-the-sky-and-you-and-i/ http://alyoung.org/index.php/2009/03/03/new-cd-the-sea-the-sky-and-you-and-i/#comments Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:22:18 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=3072 Buy album or tracks at DigStation

Order directly from Al Young.Org

$15, plus $1.75 shipping & handling plus 9.75% CA sales tax

TOTAL: $18.21

_________________________________

Cover photo: Al Young

_________________________________

The Sea, The Sky, And You, And I, an exciting new $15 compact disc from Bardo Digital, went on sale officially April 1, 2009, just in plenty of time to celebrate National Poetry Month, National Library Week, and National Jazz Appreciation Month.

Available soon from Apple’s iTunes Store, Rhapsody, Sony Connect, eMusic.com, AOL’s MusicNet, BuyMusic.com, the new Napster, Music Match, and other online retailers through CD Baby’s worldwide distribution web.

Right now you may download this album or individual tracks at DigStation.

_________________________________

Back cover photo: Matt Scott
Album design: Jesse Hiatt
Burning Cat Studios, Santa Cruz, CA

Produced by Al Young

_________________________________

]]> http://alyoung.org/index.php/2009/03/03/new-cd-the-sea-the-sky-and-you-and-i/feed/ 0 http://alyoung.org/index.php/2009/02/01/pow-wow-charting-rhe-fault-lines-in-the-american-experience-short-fiction-from-then-to-now/ http://alyoung.org/index.php/2009/02/01/pow-wow-charting-rhe-fault-lines-in-the-american-experience-short-fiction-from-then-to-now/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 18:17:39 +0000 Al http://alyoung.org/?p=2373 _______________________

Edited by ISHMAEL REED
with Carla Blank

A unique “gathering of the people,” Pow Wow offers urgent, vivid insights into the fault lines that separate, distinguish, and define a nation made up of many Americas.

Cover: Ann Weinstock*

Wajahat Ali, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Russell Banks, Mitch Berman,
Cecil Brown, Nash Candelaria, Wanda Coleman, Conyus, Robert Coover, Lucha Corpi, Stanley Crouch, Fielding Dawson, Vivian Demuth,
Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Stanley Elkin,
James T. Farrell, Benjamin Franklin, Ellen Geist, Anna Nelson Harry, Robert Hass, Hillel Heinstein, Roberta Hill, Chester Himes,
Langston Hughes, Kristin Hunter, Zora Neale Hurston, Yuri Kageyama, William Melvin Kelley, John O. Killens, Susanne Lee,
Minjon LeNoir-Irwin, Russell Charles Leong, Walter K. Lew,
Paule Marshall, James Alan McPherson, Nancy Mercado,
Bharati Mukherjee, Alejandro Murguía, Aphrodite Désirée Navab,
Ty Pak, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, Danny Romero, Corie Rosen,
Floyd Salas, George S. Schuyler, Victor Séjour, Ntozake Shange,
Ray Smith, Gertrude Stein, Leon Surmelian, Mary TallMountain,
Mark Twain, E. Donald Two-Rivers, Gerald Vizenor, John A. Williams, Sholeh Wolpé, Charles Wright, Wakako Yamauchi, Frank Yerby,
Al Young, Edgardo Vega Yunqué

“Deprived of or excluded from the normal channels of communication by media increasingly monopolized by a few companies, people from diverse backgrounds and from different time periods may have no other means than writing to engage in a cross-cultural or a cross-time dialogue with one another. No other mean to comment on the important issues both historical and current: war, slavery, race, anti-Semitism, gender, class, dysfunctional family life and the like. Writing is a way by which minority thinkers can offer fresh perspectives and by which white thinkers can offer portraits of European Americans that are missing from the world as depicted by the corporate media, where all men look like Tom Cruise and all the women look like Farah Fawcett.”
– Ishmael Reed (from his Foreword)

Da Capo Press
503 pages
$19.95 U.S.
ISBN 978-1-56858-342-6 (paperback)
January 2009

_______________________

*Authors pictured on the cover of POW WOW: Nztozake Shange, Alejandro Murguía, Gertrude Stein, Benjamin Franklin

2009 Poetry Speaks Boxed Calendar
(Poetry Speaks Experience)

 _______________________________________________

 

Poetry Speaks, Expanded

An Enthralling Experience

Kathryn Atwood (Midwest) – See all my reviews

Although poetry was read, recited and memorized by entire families through the 19th century, during the 20th century it fell out of general popular favor. “Modern” poetry was considered too difficult for the average reader, so while it was read in schools and adored in academia, it moved out of the family parlor and into the anthology.

Enter the latest edition of “Poetry Speaks.” Seeking to make a new connection with potential readers (and listeners) of 20th century poetry, Sourcebooks has again assembled a package that is at once enthralling and educational. Each poet (47 in all) featured in the volume receives a biography, an extremely readable analysis of the poet’s work and several key poems. Some of the “chapters” also include a fascimilie of a poem or section of a poem written in the poet’s own hand.

The outstanding feature of “Poetry Speaks, Expanded” is, of course, the set of CDs which feature each poet reading their own work. This, aside from being extremely exciting for those of us with a bit of familiarity with a particular poet, also sheds some interesting light on the poems themselves. Who knew, for example, that Tennyson meant to emphasis the word “rode” in his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (as in: “into the valley of death RODE the six hundred) or that Gwendolyn Brooks’ “we” of “We Real Cool” was a barely audible syncopated beat in her famous poem?

But the real thrill is that by listening to the poets read their beautiful poems, one gets a window into their very souls. Carl Sandburg sounds Swedish (who knew?) and musical, Robert Frost sounds weary, Sylvia Plath sounds bitter, Edna St. Vincent Millay sounds actressy, Dorothy Parker sounds melancholy, Jack Kerouac sounds cool (which is obviously to be expected from the author of “On the Road,” but his beloved jazz music playing in the background helps!) and Robert Browning sounds, well, inaudible, but kudos to Sourcebooks for including him and several other 19th century poets — they’re a bit scratchy but, aside from Browning, basically audible. While listening to Dylan Thomas, one wonders if his absolutely gorgeous voice had something to do with his immense popularity, since he gave extensive readings of his work during his short lifetime.

In addition to including well known poets such as those already mentioned, “Poetry Speaks, Expanded” also includes the work of many lesser-known poets including Louise Bogan, Louis MacNeice, Muriel Rukeyser, Robert Duncan, and Robert Hayden. The book presents the material on each poet so thoroughly that it is a marvelous way to gain an introduction to the work of previously unfamiliar poets.

The poems collected here are the very best of the very best and hearing them read by their creators is absolutely breathtaking. The CD also contains brief but very insightful introductions to each poet by Charles Osgood who is very easy on the ears.

Poetry, in its essence, is meant to be heard, not merely seen, and this edition of “Poetry Speaks” has gone a long way towards making that happen.

– Kathryn Atwood
Customer reviewer at Amazon.Com

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Content of staff writer Jim Trageser’s reviews copyright © 2008 by the North County Times – Californian

“1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die”
by Tom Moon

Any music guide is going to be, by its very definition, subjective. It’s the nature of the beast. So to criticize a book like Tom Moon’s new guide by arguing that this record shouldn’t be here when this other one isn’t is pretty petty – and if that argument were to be adhered to, we’d simply not have any music-buying guides. But if one claims to be offering a basic guide to the best recordings in history, to be creating, as the book’s cover itself says, “A Listener’s Life List,” then there ought to be some sort of adherence to offering at least a foundation of what are generally considered to be the most influential and best recordings. And on that score, Moon’s book comes awfully close to failing. While the majority of albums on his list are worthy, and he shows an admirable willingness to list lesser-known albums that are wonderful listens, a series of blind spots in his selections are so egregious and so utterly misrepresent the history of 20th century music, that ultimately they leave this a deeply flawed book. (Read full review.)

Wynton Marsalis is one of the most influential musicians in the United States today. Through his role as leader of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, through his numerous recordings and constant touring and lectures, Marsalis is leading much of our ongoing discussion about the role of art in our culture. A new book, written with Geoffrey C. Ward, is written in such a way that its main purpose seems to be as a jumping-off point for the next round of that discussion. Marsalis argues persuasively and passionately that jazz is unique among musical styles for its blend of improvisation and structure, with swing at the heart of it all. (Read full review.)

Charles Robinson doesn’t have the name recognition of a William Claxton, William Gottlieb or Chuck Stewart. But like his better-known associates, the California-based Robinson has spent his adult life taking photographs of jazz musicians. Some of his best are collected in a new book from Heyday, “Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames.” It’s an intriguing collection presented here, a mix of performance shots and more relaxed, backstage candids. Robinson clearly had access – the multiple photographs of a recording session with saxophonist Illinois Jacquet and pianist John Lewis shows both men relaxed and utterly indifferent to the camera; that’s the mark of a good photog, there. (Read full review.)

Al Young,
Something About the Blues
(Sourcebooks, 2007)

Al Young can best be considered a street poet. His inspiriation is the lived life, rather than the classroom, the page or the mass media. His language is the language of conversation, plain talk, the American diction of direct speech. In “The Old Fashioned Cincinnati Blues,” for example, he writes:

All I wanna dream about’s
that NY Cincy Terminal
that summer with its intervals
of RC Cola Coolers,
tin tub baths taken
one at a time
back behind the evening stove–

It’s a beautiful evocation of the past, captured in specific images, and reminding us once and for all that a poem, whatever else it might be, must be an act of communication.

In this book, Young collects all of the poems he has written that use the blues as their basis. There are poems based on blues songs, such as “Blue Monday,” and poems that use encounters with artists as a springboard, such as “The Elvis I Knew Was Spiritual,” and “You Catch Yourself on a Train With Yo-Yo Ma.”

The astonishing thing about the collection is its range. When all of the poems center on one subject, the results can be claustrophobic, but, like many of the musicians he writes about, Young has the chops to create a variety of moods, effects and subthemes within his dominant idea.

Something About the Blues is a book that neither poetry readers nor music lovers will want to miss. As a bonus, the book contains a CD with more than an hour’s worth of poems from the book, read by Young himself, often with musical accompaniment. His performance is as subtle, varied and quietly explosive as the blues.

– Michael Scott Cain

Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames  The jazz greats—photographed on stage and behind the scenes, and remembered in poetry.

The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson  |  Poetic Takes and Riffs by Al Young

more

BLUE MONK:  Button pin to promote the Fall 2008 publication of JAZZ IDIOM: Blueprints, Stills and Frames |The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson; Poetic Takes and Riffs by Al Young (Heyday Books)

Original photo: Charles L. Robinson   |   Button design: Lorraine Rath   |   Doctored blue version: Al Young    

Shipping September 2008

JAZZ IDIOM

Blueprints, Stills and Frames

Click here to order

the jazz photography of

Charles L. Robinson

poetic takes and riffs by

Al Young

 

Photo: Joseph L. Robinson

The jazz greats, as photographed on stage and
behind the scenes

Thirty-nine jazz luminaries are captured in this book,
including Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Louis Bellson, Ray
Brown, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny
Hodges, Carmen McRae, Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone,
and Anita O’Day. Poet Laureate of California Al Young riffs,
bobs, and croons his way across the page, providing poetry,
anecdotes, and insight into the players captured on film by
photographer Charles L. Robinson. Robinson was a friend to
many of the musicians photographed and, as a result, often
caught them in moments of candor and intimacy.

In Robinson’s photographs we see artists rehearsing before
a set: Charles Mingus, goateed and pensive, hunched over a
Steinway, phrases dancing in his head. Or the legendary Earl
“Fatha” Hines at the Monterey Jazz Festival, in the groove,
the original cool cat in sunglasses (back before Ray Charles
was even born) and famous for breaking the bass strings of
a piano. We see Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rushing backstage,
talking about some time “back in the day.” We see Milt
Jackson and Dizzy Gillespie sharing a joke. When the last
blue note of a performance is but a memory, and the smoke
cascades up to the beams of a club at two in the morning,
Robinson is there.

Born in 1934 and raised in Baltimore, Charles L. Robinson
earned a B.A. in biological science as well an M.S.
in vocational rehabilitation counseling from California
State University, San Francisco. At the invitation of Ralph
J. Gleason, Robinson became the staff photographer of the
Monterey Jazz Festival for several years.

Al Young is the author of more than twenty books of
poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and has taught
writing and literature at Stanford University, U.C. Santa
Cruz, and the University of Michigan. The recipient of
Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright fellowships, he lives in
Berkeley and is presently the Poet Laureate of California.

Jazz Idiom
Blueprints, Stills and Frames
The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson; Poetic Takes and Riffs by Al Young

• ISBN-10: 1597140953
• ISBN-13: 978-1597140959

© Charles L. Robinson, Al Young, Heyday Books

Click images to sample audio tracks

Astrud For Lovers

Astrud Gilberto

Reviews (1)

Ben Webster For Lovers

Ben Webster

Reviews (0)

Bill Evans For Lovers

Bill Evans

Reviews (0)

Bossa Nova For Lovers

Various Artists

Reviews (7)

Carmen McRae For Lovers

Carmen McRae

Reviews (1)

Charlie Parker For Lovers

Charlie Parker

Reviews (0)

Chet For Lovers

Chet Baker

Reviews (1)

Christmas For Lovers

Various Artists

Reviews (2)

Coltrane For Lovers

John Coltrane

Reviews (6)

Dinah Washington For Lovers

Dinah Washington

Reviews (0)

Ella & Louis For Lovers

Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong

Reviews (0)

Ella For Lovers

Ella Fitzgerald

Reviews (1)

Getz For Lovers

Stan Getz

Reviews (3)

Holiday For Lovers

Billie Holiday

Reviews (1)

Johnny Hartman For Lovers

Johnny Hartman

Reviews (2)

Louis For Lovers

Louis Armstrong

Reviews (0)

More John Coltrane For Lovers

John Coltrane

Reviews (1)

More Stan Getz For Lovers

Stan Getz

Reviews (0)

New York For Lovers

Various Artists

Reviews (2)

Nina Simone For Lovers

Nina Simone

Reviews (0)

Oscar Peterson For Lovers

Oscar Peterson

Reviews (0)

Paris For Lovers

Various Artists

Reviews (0)

Sarah For Lovers

Sarah Vaughan

Reviews (4)

Compiled by Richard Seidel
Sequenced by Renée Rosnes
Supervised by Bryan Koniarz
Mastered by Allan Tucker at Foothill Digital, New York City
Production and research coordinated by Carlos Kase
Art directed by Hollis King
Designed by GrowingStudio, Bklyn
Illustrations by Amélie Hazard
Art production directed by Sherniece Smith
Photographs by Chuck Stewart
Liner notes by Al Young
Notes edited by Peter Keepnews
Special thanks to the Institute of Jazz Studies

Universal Music Group Terms of Use | © 1999 – 2008 Verve Music Group | Privacy Policy

Abram Bergen

There is something about the blues that grabs hold of you and moves you, physically and emotionally, that transports you to places past, present and imagined, something that taps into the deepest elemental parts of you to soothe and sometimes heal. It’s easy to lose yourself in the blues. Its history runs deep and its influence on other forms has been enormous. The blues, Al Young writes in the introduction to Something About the Blues: an unlikely collection of poetry, is “beaded and threaded throughout America’s musical mosaic.” But the blues, like poetry, is difficult to describe, define, confine. “The blues,” he writes, “will always be dramatically unpredictable, sometimes torturous and sometimes pleasurable,” and “ever resistant to classroom analysis,” for the blues dwells largely “in a feral state; blues truth is wild and menacing.”

Something About the Blues is blues poetry. Though I’ve often listened to and lost myself in the blues, and have immersed myself in various kinds of poetry, I must confess that I was largely ignorant of the blues in poetic form until I had the good fortune to read this collection. The first to popularize blues poetry was Langston Hughes, born in Joplin, Missouri in 1902, and best “known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.” It is fitting, then, that Young opens his collection of blues poetry with Hughes’ beautiful and haunting poem, “The Weary Blues.” This poem, read by Hughes himself, also opens the accompanying CD. It serves as a wonderful introduction to the spirit of blues poetry and sets the mood perfectly.

Al Young, born in 1939 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, was raised first in Mississippi and then in Detroit, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan from 1957-1960, co-editing Generation, the campus literary magazine. In 1961 he settled in Berkeley, where he held a number of odd jobs — folksinger, lab aide, disk jockey, medical photographer, clerk typist, employment counselor — before graduating with a degree in Spanish from U.C. Berkeley. He has taught creative writing and literature at various universities, has received numerous honours, including, inter alia, Wallace Stegner, Guggenheim, Fulbright National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and the PEN-Library of Congress Award for Short Fiction. Young has written a number of poetry collections, several novels, three musicals, and numerous screenplays. He was appointed Poet Laureate of California in 2005 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Everything in Something About the Blues is to some extent a meditation on the blues. This collection attempts to say something about the blues – its origins, history, themes, essence and power. Whether through dedications, tributes, or other mention, many jazz and blues greats make it into this powerful collection – Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Lester “Pres” Young, Marian McPartland, Ella Fitzgerald, Lead Belly, Vernon Alley, Harry Connick, Jr., Lena Horn, the James Cotton Band, Gene Ammons, Benny Carter, Johnny Hodges, Clifford Brown, Billie Holiday, John “Dizzy” Birks Gillespie, Malcolm X, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, James P. Johnson, Langston Hughes, and James Brown. Some poems allude to and play with poetry from the Western “white” Canon, while others address, more specifically, issues of racism and systemic discrimination, of exoticization, othering and hybridity, as well as of terrorism and environmental racism. Some of these topics go well beyond the traditional themes of the blues. And then some poems are of a more playful nature, more earthy and sensual.

The poetry in this collection, like the blues, is raw and elemental. It rarely indulges in complex symbols, extended metaphors, or florid language. It is less constrained by meter and rhyme, but characterized by the liberal use of alliteration, assonance and internal rhyme, enjambment, repetition, and rhythm. It’s language is, on the whole, clear, direct, hard-hitting.

There is one poem, just a little into the book, that captures so much of the often contradictory nature of the blues. Young’s “The Blues Don’t Change” addresses the blues directly:

And I was born with you, wasn’t I, Blues?
Wombed with you, wounded, reared and forwarded
from address to address, stamped, stomped
and returned to sender by nobody else but you,
Blue Rider, writing me off every chance you
got, you mean old grudgefulhearted, table
turning demon, you, you sexy soulsucking gem.

The blues is a contradictory character, both wombing and wounding you. You bear its stamp, yet also feel stomped on, moved from place to place, returned to sender, and written off by the blues. The blues stings where you can’t scratch and moves you “from frying/pan to skillet” just as it moves you to wiggle your body, juggle your limbs, loosen that goose, up your voice, open your pores, and roll your hips and lips.

The blues is characterized as a grudgefulhearted (neat word), table-turning demon who is also — here begins another wonderful twist — a sexy soulsucking gem, a “[b]lue diamond in the rough” who “can’t be outfoxed don’t care how they cut/and smuggle and shine you on.” And, in a note to students and theorists, the blues is “too dumb and stubborn and necessary/to let them turn you into what you ain’t/with color or theory or powder or paint.” You can never, the poem suggests, fully capture or contain the blues. And it is its contradictory, shape-shifting nature that allows the blues to stay forever fresh and current.

The impossibility of capturing the blues completely is also addressed in “Detroit 1958.” “Only parts of the pain of living/may be captured in a poem or/tale or song or in the image seen,” goes the first stanza. In the blues, as in life, “[s]adness is the theme of existence;/joy its variations.” The blues merely imitates the pain of life, but, in another apparent contradiction, it is, “as the man sings,/’The bitter note makes the song so sweet.”

There is plenty of bitterness in Young’s poetry, though it is not consumed by it. And sometimes that bitterness also comes out in poems alluding to and playing with poems from the Western canon. “The Lovesong of O.O.Gabugah” is a good example, an obvious allusion to T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a lengthy, meandering, metaphorically dense poem about an aging, indecisive, isolated urban man walking along foggy half-deserted streets on his way to what sounds like a high society party in order to woo a particular woman. But he doesn’t dare. His indecisiveness and insecurity are the focus of the poem, and the reader — aren’t we lucky? — gets to accompany Prufrock and listen in on his inner dialogue.

Though parts of Eliot’s poem suggest a somewhat tongue-in-cheek nature, Young’s “The Lovesong of O.O. Gabugah” lies in sharp contrast. The tone, right from the start, reflects a rougher context, a very different reality. Instead of “Let us go then, you and I,” we get “Time to split now, you & me.” The narrator of Young’s poem, presumably a black male, also takes his reader along on a walk through an urban landscape, “past alleyways & neon signs/& people waitin in movie lines.” But he has no time for lengthy reflection, comparing himself to this or that dramatic figure, to Hamlet, or even Polonius the Fool, or wrapping his emotional insecurities in fancy, drawn-out metaphors. He is physically in danger. If he so much as stops too long near the people waiting in movie lines, he fears getting zapped. What we witness here is something much more grim – “[t]he snowy line… whooshed up the chimney clean, burnt out a nose,/& sniffin all there was to know about July,/just blew its ownself out, forget the rose.” Our guide here is not on his way to a high society party where well-dressed ladies discuss Michelangelo. He is headed to a place where he can forget his misery by blowing himself out with cocaine.

One piece in this collection, more short story than poem, addresses a form of oppression and source of misery one wouldn’t necessarily expect in a blues collection. “Silent Parrot Blues” discusses environmental racism, a fairly new and academic concept that links racism, a common theme in the blues, to the environment, an uncommon one. It is prefaced by a quote from Myrla Baldanado, Statement Coordinator: People’s Task Force for Base Clean Up, that explains what environmental racism is – forcing people of colour “to bear the brunt of the nation’s pollution problem.” The story begins with Young encountering a listless, raggedy, broken parrot kept in a dark supply closet by a building superintendent. As he walks back to his apartment, arms full of laundry and disturbed, he meets his intellectually curious hallway neighbor, Briscoe, a veteran of the American War in Vietnam.

Through the conversation with the well-read and socially-aware though rough around the edges Briscoe, a good amount of ground is covered on the topic of environmental racism. Briscoe wants him to take his parrot story straight to the mayor and city council, because, as he puts it, “white people don’t like that shit. They hate it – mistreating birds and animals… They won’t stand for it…. In fact, they’re prepared to make your ass extinct in a minute before they’ll let anybody fuck with a timber wolf.” Young goes on to talk about Romanticism and its role in creating an industrial and post-Industrial society in which humans are seen as separate, apart from, and above nature. He then links that kind of thinking back to the “English Romantics — Shelley, Byron, Keats, Thomas Gray, Samuel Coleridge, and William Blake, among others — [who] did their part to exoticize nature.” He goes on to mention Thoreau, and not very flatteringly either, as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne, James Fennimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and the poetry of Poe and Whitman. Their kind of thinking has contributed to the dumping of all manner of dangerous waste, as Briscoe points out, “where black people and Mexicans and Indians live.” While people of colour, more than anyone else, bear the brunt of the world’s pollution problem, Young does point out that poor whites are also affected.

By including environmental racism in this collection, as well as cultural hybridity, terrorism and extraordinary rendition, Young updates the blues. If the subject matter, the inspiration that often gives rise to and feeds the blues is the highs, though more often the lows, of people oppressed, then these topics belong in the blues of an increasingly complex and globalised society.

In Something About the Blues,” Al Young, as the title suggests, says something about the blues. In his “Statement on Poetics” at the end of the collection, Young says that “[a]fter 60 years of listening, I still feel as though I can’t get started; as though I have so little to say about jazz and the roles all music continues to play in that curtainless sun-room in the mansion of my life, where thinking and telling take bloom.” Though a force as elemental and dynamic as the blues can never be entirely captured and contained, Young does manage to say a great deal about the blues in this collection, and the spirit of the blues certainly moves within and through it. The inclusion of a CD with various live readings brings the poetry even closer, making it come to life. Unfortunately, the sound quality of the CD is not always consistent – the volume and clarity change from reading to reading, which is a bit disconcerting. It may be because they were recorded at different venues, without sufficient audio post-processing. And perhaps this is only a problem on the advance copy. Overall, the more time is spent with Something About the Blues, the more emerges that is beautiful, captivating, painful, powerful, sometimes soothing, and often thought-provoking. This collection of blues poetry comes highly recommended.

A sinister cabal of superior writers

Blogcritics Magazine Books Editor: Natalie Bennett