The Infinity Sessions: Poems

by T.R. Hummer

In The Infinity Sessions, T. R. Hummer achieves a radical act of translation, creating poems that project the narrative of twentieth-century America implicit in the syncopated rhythms of jazz and blues. Hummer boldly stands up as a poet and rides with some of the obscure greats with whom he feels a deep kinship -- Jimmie Lunceford, Adrian Rollini, Big Maybelle Smith, and Sun Ra -- in a dazzling poetic cycle as melodic, surprising, and improvisational...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807130664
• ISBN13: 9780807130667
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Jazz poems

Hummer is one of my favorite poets, and this book is distinct and powerful. It's a suite of poems, based on jazz and blues musicians, but it also tells the cultural history of the country--especially from the 40s through the 70s--through the lives of those musicians, who were tortured, sometimes, troubled, but also visionary. The section "about" Sun Ra is especially powerful. Are you sick of smartaleck poetry, or unreadable oblique verse, or unpeopled deconstructions of, well, whatever? Me too. Read Hummer. He's the real thing.