In a fine balance of celebration and elegy, Cortez's 12th collection is an erudite and sensual homage to global jazz culture. The 66 poems included come together into a powerfully executed project, evidenced in the breadth of Cortez's exploration of musics, musicians and melodies touching upon Afro-Spanish, African, Brazilian and American sounds and histories. Cortez (Poetic Magnetic) is lucid and direct in her critiques of mainstream culture ("I don't need the three stooges of jazz criticism/ to tell me anything") and contemporary politics: "You're in the globalization economic domination process/ Now what's your take," she asks wryly. The author's trademark fascination with the corporeal world is present throughout this book, as are deft invocations of jazz rhythms, established through the force of syntax, rhyme and repetition. In "Cobra Club," she writes, "I hold the scorpion and tequila in my mouth/ we embrace the paranoid sea/ the tip of a stinging kilimanjaro licked/ Let it dry like fly specks between cyclones/ in this lobe burnt pepper day/ in the dizzy spells falling head/ in belly bush navels with sesame crabs." As Cortez writes in "Ribs & Jazz Fest 94," "The music is happening/ & I'm very optimistic." While this book has been a work in progress since the late 1960s, the poems, and their optimism, transcend their moments. (Apr. 15)
Forecast:An integral part of the Black Arts movement, Cortez founded the Watts Repertory Company in 1964, and in the '70s she founded and ran Bola Press. With the Firespitters and other bands, Cortez has recorded numerous CDs, and her poetry has been translated into 28 languages. With her work starting to attract academic attention, look for Cortez to have a higher profile in the coming years; this book should sell steadily.
