Don’t Fret

"If you know little about jazz or poetry, this book will be full of profit and delight. It will teach you about the history of the most American of music, its giants, feeling and craft. If you know about jazz and poetry, you'll see at once how marvelously Michael L. Newell has matched his knowledge and love for the former with his gift for the latter. Here are the heroes with their tragedies and talent. Here are evocations of their sublimity and pain. Newell does more than celebrate the improvisations, rhythms, and moods of the music; he reproduces them in lively, moving, and inspired verse. These poems about jazz are jazz poems." Robert Wexelblatt, Author of Hsi-wei Tales, Girl Asleep and Other Poems, etc.