Conjugations and Reiterations : Poems

Rating:
Summary: The Supreme Effort to Make Words Swing
Review: Albert Murray's definition of poetry is "the supreme effort to make words swing". As author of "Stomping the Blues" and one of the most insightful and brilliant commentators on jazz and American culture, Mr. Murray makes his poems swing like his hero Duke Ellington. Murray plays poetic riffs on a variety of topics which he's touched upon before in his life's work, which now contains 12 books. There's a long and beautiful poem about William Faulkner. There's a jazz riff on Eliot's "Wasteland". There is a chapter of down-home 12-bar blues verses, titled "Aubades" ("morning songs") much like the ones Murray would have heard in his youth in Mobile, Alabama in the 1920's. There are poems about love, life, death, and even a light-hearted church sermon. In terms of poetic technique, the poems are exquisitely rendered, and in terms of subject matter they are fresh and relevant not only for contemporary Americans, but for all contemporary humans. There's everything from praise for Thelonius Monk, to a debunking of Sigmund Freud, and throughout it all is the rigorous intellectual structure, vast erudition, and good-natured, hilarious barber-shop humor of Albert Murray. This is a must-have for fans of Albert Murray and fans of great poetry in general, and is a should-have for everyone!