Poetic conversations with cultural icons Edward Hopper, Chet Baker, Theodore Roethke, John Coltrane and others form the basis of this engaging collection by an award-winning writer and jazz musician.
Minnesota Book Award-winning poet Richard Terrill is back with a new collection of poetic “conversations” with the work and wisdom of Walt Whitman, Diane Arbus, Miles Davis, Groucho Marx, and more. Tai qi, classic movies, environmental angst, and the inexorable passage of time are among the subjects the poems consider—along with Terrill’s signature subject, music, especially the blue nights and blue notes of jazz. Terrill borrows language and image from his sources and handles it with care. Here is a blend of humor and pathos, of light and of dark, that revels in its contradictions and conundrums. The pages of What Falls Away Is Always will provoke, delight, and surprise.