Of Jazz and Poetry

We are back home, and happy to find that David Juda has completed a wonderful project of posting poems and music from For Jazz on his website, Voetica.

Just click on an artist to see and listen. This area of the site features woodcuts by Nina Mera, poetry by Peter McSloy, and accompanying music by jazz greats.

This site is a terrific resource to hear many recordings of contemporary and significant poems from the past.  With a background in theater, David has found extraordinary talent and there are new additions all the time. Worth going back to many times.

Renaissance Man

larry celebrityAside from baseball, bridge, collecting blues and jazz autographs, and having taught me to cook many years ago, before he tiptoed out of the kitchen for several decades, Larry is also the publisher of hit & run press, and has an extensive collection of broadsides–poems printed on oversize sheets of paper for display, often with graphic ornamentation.  He has published many of these.

He also collects others’ broadsides. His most recent acquisition was of three broadsides done of original calligraphy by Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch–three of the “beat poets” of the West Coast. They had all studied calligraphy with Lloyd Reynolds at Reed. Steve Jobs also studied with him, and Jobs’ study of calligraphy led to the wealth of fonts he introduced to the computer. Continue reading “Renaissance Man”