Misterioso

Sascha Feinstein

The inaugural winner of Copper Canyon’s Hayden Carruth Emerging Poet Award, this volume dips into the biographies, histories, and sounds of jazz music, using jazz as a metaphor through which to witness personal relationships. Whether writing about John Coltrane or Thelonious Monk (the inspiration for the book’s title), Feinstein transcends mere portraiture by emphasizing the meditative and sonorous qualities of jazz music.

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ISBN: 9781556591365

Format: Paperback

Excerpt from “Sonnets for Stan Gage (1945–1992)”

Your hands cracked and callused in summer, bled
          Every winter. That’s the way it’s always been,
                    You said, clutching your fingers in a mottled
White towel. All of your unspoken
          Words—the angular elbows and snapped wrists—
                    Resonate in memory like cymbals left
Unstruck, forever anticipating the stick’s
          Crash. Damn it, Stan. You thought death
                    Was some young drummer you could cut, the way
You kept outplaying fate with heroin
          Overdoses, a mugger’s four-inch blade
                    In your chest which now I can only see in
My mind heaving. The clean linoleum tile.
          A nurse washing her hands. The cold bed rail.

About the Author

Sascha Feinstein’s books include two poetry collections, Misterioso and Ajanta’s Ledge; two memoirs, Black Pearls: Improvisations on a Lost Year and Wreckage: My Father’s Legacy of Art & Junk; two critical books on jazz poetry; and an interview collection, Ask Me Now. In 1996, he founded Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature, which he still edits. His awards include the Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for Artist of the Year. He is the Robert L. and Charlene Shangraw Professor of …

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Reviews

“Beginning with a section of jazz paean—’Coltrane, Coltrane’; ‘Blues for Zoot’; ‘Sonnets for Stan Gage’—and cruising through travels to Siena, Cape Cod, Singapore and Bali (with a section-long stop in Corcovadi), Sascha Feinstein’s debut imagines musical people, places and things with clarity and acuity.” —Publishers Weekly

“In this moving book, music seems woven into the very DNA of poet Sascha Feinstein… [He] links memory, feeling, autobiography, official history with imagination the same way recording engineers ingeniously mix, shape, and color sound… These walking, talking poems leap to life and burst into flame.” —Al Young

“Feinstein’s poems are syncopations in time, memory, and the everlasting moment of a sax solo. An impressive, multi-layered debut for an important new series.” —Bloomsbury Review

“With Misterioso, Sascha Feinstein has established himself as a first-rate poet.” —American Book Review

“[Feinstein is] a careful, quiet master of verse because nothing is wasted…[Misterioso] is a book to be mined again and again.” —Jazz Times

“Sascha Feinstein’s poetry takes you in…He beckons you into mystery, where revelations are to be found… A lyricist, Sascha Feinstein breathes inaudible lyrics into instrumentals… He sculpts with language the tacit beating of the human heart.” —Mulberry Poets & Writers

“Jazz is Feinstein’s spine… This stunning riff on jazz and personal history… is a tasty, magic mélange.” —North American Review