Stranger on the Shore - Paperback

by Patricia Carragon (Author)

Patricia Carragon's Stranger on the Shore is a collection of poems tracing links between jazz and poetry, musicians and poets. Not only will you linger over the poet's words but will want to listen to every song that inspired the poems. She begins "Paris the Beautiful" with "On a rainy night, /jazz drives a taxi//makes conversation in the NYC glare." Oh man, what a line. Talking back and talking to the characters in these songs, Carragon shares her kickin' interpretations with us. If you are a jazz lover, you will satiate your thirst with this book. And if you're not, you will become one. --- Margaret R. Sáraco-author of Even the Dog Was Quiet and If There Is No Wind (Human Error Publishing)

These jazz-inspired poems elate, depress, make you wonder why, doubt, and even have faith. Carragon draws on the spirits of Fitzgerald, Ellington, Coltrane, Sinatra, and many more to inhabit and guide her poetry, but the pervasive moodiness of Nina Simone is present throughout. The grittiness of New York City, with its painful solitude but also its joyful exuberance, rules this collection. From a shabby walk-up in Harlem to a swinging nightclub in Greenwich Village, for cab drivers, musicians, and for all of us, jazz rules over this domain, and it thrives in Carragon's poetry. R. Bremner-author of Absurd (Cajun Mutt Press) and Pencil Sketches (Clare Songbirds Publications)