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Into Jazz: Five Poems

Alfred K. LaMotte

Into Jazz - Poems by Alfred K LaMotte

1. FALLUJAH Training in the woods at Fort Lewis, Washington, on patrol and for a moment quite alone, you happen upon a trillium, moon-silver secret revelation piercing fern green … [Read more...]

A.D. Winans Remembers Bob Kaufman

A.D. Winans

AD Winans remembers Bob Kaufman

Bob Kaufman, known in France as the American Rimbaud, was one of the original Beat poets to come out of the Fifties. He is rightfully regarded as one of the most influential black poets of his era, … [Read more...]

Where The Hell is Shafi Hadi?*

Sean Murphy

jazz sax

(*Saxophone player Shafi Hadi, born Curtis Porter, is best-known for his association with jazz legend Charles Mingus, and played on the seminal recording Mingus Ah Um, from 1959. He dropped out of the … [Read more...]

Three poems by Michael O’Shaughnessy

Michael O'Shaughnessy

gull

< Anemone of the State the sea (all those parts pooled into one) upheaves and twists long rocks like dirty shirts on the beach. i jump over the laundry, balancing on a collar before … [Read more...]

Jazz and the Money Jungle

Todd Clouser

wall

The same thing happens everywhere Money Jungle is perfect, of the skin, maybe the pulse On the night no one talks about A day before New Years, in Panama City Crooked toe cranes light the … [Read more...]

3 Poems by Ryan Ritchie

Ryan Ritchie

JK - Jack Kerouac typewriter

FOR JACK nothing any wordsmith can do with a keyboard matches the beauty that leaps from the subconscious mind of the jazz musician. we sit and think, type, sit and think some more, never … [Read more...]

Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek – The Piano Poems: Live From San Francisco

Empty Mirror News

Michael McClure and Ray Manzarek - Piano Poems

McClure & Manzarek's third CD Listen to tracks / buy at Amazon: Piano Poems: Live in San Francisco A collaboration between Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure, this live performance, recorded … [Read more...]

Jazz & Poetry Collaboration Workshop: Michael McClure & George Brooks

Empty Mirror News

Michael McClure & George Brooks

The JazzSchool of Berkeley Is Offering a Rare Workshop by GEORGE BROOKS & MICHAEL Mc CLURE Jazz & Poetry: The Craft of Collaboration SATURDAY, JULY 7th, 2012, 3:15 pm The … [Read more...]

The Language of Bebop: Syncopated Sounds and Rhythms in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

Nicole Henares

Syncopated Sounds and Rhythms in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’

America, mid-twentieth century. Wearied by civilization, excesses and ornamentation, complications and. All precursors to extinction: The drone of war, the machinery of death, the … [Read more...]

Blowing: Poetry Meets Music in the Writing of the Beat Generation

Eric V. Patterson

photo by Bruno Cervera / Unsplash

PROCEDURE: Time being of the essence in the purity of speech, sketching language is undisturbed flow from the mind of personal secret idea-words, blowing (as per jazz musician) on subject of … [Read more...]

Tom Waits’ Influence On Modern Jazz

Robert Wright

Carlton Smith CD

When I first wrote about the influence that Tom Waits had on me as a songwriter (Introduction to Alchemy), I had one thing on my mind: publicity. When the idea for the second article (Applied Alchemy) … [Read more...]

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Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

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Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

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