Synopses & Reviews
Poetry that comes out of the jazz music of African American artists.
Synopsis
Riffing through the canon of jazz greats from Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to Ornette Coleman, Plumpp's Ornate With Smoke comes the closest to a saxophone solo-in-verse as you're likely to read. --Publishers Weekly. A tribute to the creativity and emotional power of a jazz master, Ornate With Smoke also exemplifies a poet's restless questioning of America and himself. Plumpp creates as free, as inventive, as surprising, as masterful a passage through our language as Coltrane did through scales and changes. This is a beautiful, astonishing book. --Reginald Gibbons.
About the Author
Sterling Plumpp is a poet, educator, and essayist with a long history of writing, teaching, and activism. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois-Chicago and is currently a member of the faculty at Chicago State University.