Yannis Livadas – John Coltrane And 15 Poems For Jazz

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Translated by Jack Hirschman & Dimitri Charalambous
(C.C. Marimbo, Berkeley, California 2008)

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METAPHOR

When the Dolphy family
delivered
the wind instruments of its dead
to John Coltrane

a black god knew
what it meant

TONY FRUSCELLA

One day we’ ll meet each other
in the pipe of some trumpet
who collapses first in
expression
my brotherly Delphic bro.
Alcoholique, drogue et finalment closardise.

That on one leg
whatever we say stands

how can we say

SATURN ROLLS IN THE GRAND CANYON
(For Wadada Leo Smith & Anthony Braxton)

Much more than music creating
numbless in the enviroment
since the form that concerns him
is an all-embracing

graph which sences how he feels it
and that
not the totality
– an encounter’s fracture with a demand for diminishing
but somewhere it’ ll stop and become again as it was, having acquired
time-worn wrinkles of a

reality that bubbles up from deep
pores at only one point
in the realm of his loneliness –

since the form that concerns him is
mean and self-styled

much more than
death.

From the introduction of the book:

“Livadas began translating American poetry in the 90ʼs and recently has published a large anthology of the works of Ginsberg, Corso, Ferlinghetti, Olson, Norse and others. His own poetry, influenced as well by that of Blaise Cendrars, has resulted in some very brilliant works, and his latest collection of poems [“Apteros Nike/Business/Sphinx” by Iridanos Books, 2008] is regarded as a turning point in modern Greek poetry.
Livadas was born in 1969 in Kalamata, Greece. He has also been an editor and publisher of various works, and a columnist. He is considered an expert in postmodern American poetry and the poetry of the Far East. Heʼs been called the Jazz poet of Greece.
In a recent interview, Livadas has succinctly clarified his approach to poetry and jazz: “Jazz is pure art. And is not restricted to the music area. If we consider it as such then we ignore its greatest importance; the fact that above all Jazz is a way of life, an attribute of thinking and doing and, in my case as a poet, a way of writing, of getting into the heart of the poem. As for the poetic language Iʼm not interested in surrealism, the Beats, etc. Iʼm only interested in the voice of the Muse, the deep poem, the total. My poetry may derive, on the one hand, from the postmodern Americans and, on the other hand, from Cendrars, but it has its own system, its own risks… Anyway, whether I write longer poems, which I prefer doing, or shorter ones, Iʼm in play; I gamble.”
… This has been a trio ensemble bringing the visions of one poet to a bilingual homage with respect to the Jazz poem that was born about three years ago and has been liberating sound-sense ever since.
The book is distributed by the City Lights Bookstore in San Fransisco.