for Jack Ridl
“Doc, here’s my dizzy symptom: I’m buying these skinny books like they’re jazz CD’s— rackin’ ‘em up on the changer, five at a time, punchin’ in ‘All Disks’ and ‘Shuffle,’ diggin’ whatever cut comes improv’d out of the whirl— one long, mad, wild whirl: StaffordGinsbergRidlCollinsOliver! “Hell, even the names’ll jazz a mind that once wandered that ol’ square-ass landscape of meaning. “Damn! So, whadoIgot?” “Poems, man…. Poems.”
D. R. James
D. R. James’s latest of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at Origami Poems Project. He lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage