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In the middle of the dark wood
of his life a man might decide
that a change of direction is what’s required,

and take to going out nights
onto the Williamsburg Bridge where Manhattan’s lights
are a glittery sheen that skates

on the East River —
and sit among the noise and glare
playing the saxophone for whoever.
(from Sonny Rollins On The Williamsburg Bridge by CJ Allen)

   Thus, John Lucas’ anthology of poems on jazz starts with the well
known opening lines from Dante’s Inferno, in which a man decides to
alter the direction of his life, whatever the consequences. And it is
clear from these poems that jazz is more than just music - it is also a
choice, a stance against all those forces which would push us into
crippling conformity:

Nobody knows about those people any more’,
she replied, and I said, ‘So the world is full
of squares, but I remember their names,

and what they did. The music they made
still runs through my head every day.
A square world can’t make magic go away’
(from Against The Square World by Jim Burns)

   There is, naturally, nostalgia in the poems, a yearning for an era
that disappeared decades ago but still lives on in memory:

Hey, look at them there, hair
slicked down on either side
of their heads, and holding
their horns as if they were
going to hurl them at us any
moment. (…)
America must be full of old men,
living in rooms with greasy suits
hung behind the doors, and waiting
for someone to ask them if they
ever bought Beiderbecke a beer.
(from Those Old Jazz Photographs by Jim Burns)

But the keynote of the anthology is one of celebration of jazz: of
jazz genius, of the wide variety of jazz forms, of individual jazz players and instruments (Fats Waller and his piano crop up again and again), and, not least, jazz lifestyles. Jazz is not just a hobby for the poets represented here, but an art form which has crucially enriched their lives:

Are you with me?

‘Cos I’m turning out a snake’s note
to bareback this backbeat. That sunlight
called trumpet, I mirror with starlight,
in one solid note holding out its own
prayer:

We’re alive, baby. We’re alive. So, there.
(from Everything’s Dandy by Rommi Smith).

A lot of the poems are funny, sharing the spontaneous, exuberant
quality of jazz:

You are an elephant jiving rings round a squirrel,
a reindeer crossed with a rainbow trout,
a bear-baiting yaffle, a mad gorilla,
a snake swallowing a muted lion,
a curlew that sings for a girl’s white hand

You are jazz
(from Band Call by Geoffrey Holloway)

   In this country, jazz goes back to the years before the First World
War, and has been a source of comfort as well as pleasure. Take these lines from Ragtime, a much older poem in the anthology written by Wilfred Gibson:

Then out into the jostling Strand I turn,
And down a dark lane to the quiet river,
One stream of silver under the full moon,
And think of how cold searchlights flare and burn
Over dank trenches where men crouch and shiver,
Humming, to keep their hearts up, that same tune.

   John Lucas has put this collection together with a great deal of love and knowledge, attesting to his lifelong zest for both poetry and jazz, the two for Lucas being inseparable. The fifty five poets represented, with over a hundred poems, cover a considerable spectrum, from post-Georgian through post-Modern to neo-Beat: Kingsley Amis, Keith Armstrong, Jim Burns, Douglas Dunn, Philip Larkin, Alexis Lykiard, Sean O’Brien, Gael Turnbull, John Hartley Williams, to name just a few. What unites all the poets in this anthology is their love of jazz.

Even if you are not a jazz fan, you will enjoy many of the poems in this book. And it would make a great present for someone who is.