Friday, April 28, 2017

"All That Jazz" by John C. Mannone, Frequent Contributor

All That Jazz
John C. Mannone

To say that words of poetry dance
to the jazz beat           is something
that can only be felt. The bright
sounds, bright colors, the crisp
hue of words, percussions of
resounding fricatives. The symbols’
shshsh…onomatopoeia.
            Words arranged as notes
on a page,        the melody
            carried from stanza to stanza:
framework for the heart
            to pulse those words.
Let the spaces in between
verses be filled with rifts
of words in jazzy layout—
            an experimental composition.
Fast-paced-sounds-that-voice
an answer to a subtle melody:
saXophone wooing piano.
            Let only the chords
            of your heart   be broken
with the music of words.

Poet’s Notes: I’ve been thinking a lot about sound and the absence of sound and how that plays in poetry. This piece of meta-poetry tries to carry some of the jazz rhythms in its structure.

Editor’s Note:  I really enjoy this experiment, particularly that way John plays with white space to emphasize the jazzy feel. 

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