Sitting In: Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics

by Hayden Carruth

Overview

This collection of essays and poems about the influence of jazz on writing and culture in this country, an expanded edition of the 1986 publication, is a rewarding volume for all those entranced by jazz. Carruth brings his considerable poetic and literary sensibilities to bear on a topic very near to his heart: "Those who are devoted primarily to jazz, to poetry, to all the arts, are also those who contribute more intelligently than others to our practical and moral, political and social, advancement."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587290312
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	08/01/1993
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	239
File size:	441 KB

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction The Guy Downstairs A Chaconnade for Everyone Names Rebecca Freedom and Discipline Academicism Who Cares, Long as It's B-Flat Influences: The Formal Idea of Jazz Joe Turner Song about Earl Hines With Respect to the Infuriating Pervasiveness of Optimism A Possibly Momentary Declaration in Favor of William Butler Yeats and Chalres Ellworth Russell Paragraph Got Those Forever Inadequate Blues The Intentional Alligator Personality of Genius Tom McGrath Is Harvesting the Snow Authenticity in the Age of Massive, Multiplying Error Michigan Water: A Few Riffs before Dawn Three Paragraphs The Defeated Generation The Cowshed Blues The Main Thing about Improvisation The Blues Scale Ben Webster The Time of Falling Apart The Blues as Poetry In That Session James Wright's Collected Prose Mystery and Expressiveness An Expatiation on the Combining of Weathers at Thirty-Seventh and Indiana Where the Southern More or Less Crosses the Dog Instances Letter to Maxine Sullivan Smith To All Human Consciousness the Clandestine Is Basal Duncan's Dream Coda Meditation in the Presence of "Ostrich Walk" What Does "Organic" Mean? Good Old Wagon Ben Webster Anthems The Spun-Off Independent Dead-End Ten-Star Blast Homage to John Lyly and Frankie Newton What a Wonder Among the Instruments Is the Walloping Tramboone Eleven Memoranda on the Culture of Jazz

Editorial Reviews

Poet, critic, novelist, editor and professor of English at Bucknell, Carruth, like the late Philip Larkin, is a devoted, knowledgeable aficionado of jazz, and in some of his best writing he relates black music to English and American literature, Afro-American culture and the nature of artistic imagination. In these reprinted essays and poems, he explores the origins, forms and influences of jazz and the blues, the principles of improvisation and spontaneity, the nature of expressiveness and the contributions of Earl Hines, Bessie Smith, Maxine Sullivan, Joe Turner, Ben Webster and other musicians. Some jazz fans may find this book scholarly, but the more literate will be enthralled by Carruth's comparing the playing ofPee Wee Russell with the poetry of Alexander Pope and William Butler Yeats. (October

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Readers interested in literature and jazz will enjoy Carruth's essays and poems; he's one of few writers who can discuss the playing style of trumpeter Bunny Berigan in one paragraph and the merits of writers Alexander Pope and Ezra Pound in the next. Although some essays focus on literature alone, Carruth's interest in jazz music unites these essays, which might otherwise seem unrelated. He writes passionately and knowledgeably about the jazz of the 1940s, and he may inspire some readers to rediscover their old Ben Webster recordings. Sitting In could fit equally well among titles on poetry, literary criticism, or music. For essays that focus consistently on jazz, see works by Gene Lees, Whitney Balliett, or Gary Giddins. Recommended for comprehensive collections.-- Paul Baker, CUNA Inc., Madison, Wis.

Library Journal

"Sitting In is a book about art, about participation, about the cultures of jazz and poetry: the homage of a white poet and jazz musician to the greatness of the African American gift to the sensibility of this country. But, more than this, it's a book about our extremes—personal and public—a book that defies critical boundaries—a book of passion, conscience, and contradictions. Poets and musicians should read it, students of multiculturalism should read it; all those with hopes for our national future should read it. And keep going back to the music."—Adrienne Rich

"Writing about jazz is no easy matter. Its pleasures and its artistry have no precedent in aesthetics. Here's a new American art form of which we have rarely had an adequate description. It is appropriate that a great poet should be the one who finds the words for that experience. Hayden Carruth has written one of the finest books on jazz we have."—Charles Simic

From the Publisher