Jazz Journal – until recently the best-selling magazine at Foyles flagship shop (try saying that when you’ve had a few) in Charing Cross Road – has, for some time now, been generous towards my fiction, the Resnick series especially, in its review pages, and now said generosity has extended to poetry. Here’s Mark Gardner’s recent review of Out of Silence.
Known primarily for his series of 20 jazz-tinged novels, John Harvey is also an accomplished poet. This latest collection of verse draws from two previous collections, Ghosts of a Chance and Bluer Than This, besides including half a dozen new poems. More than a few of the contents have a strong jazz flavour, not least Blue Monk, Charlie Parker in Green Shoes, Chet Baker, Ghosts of a Chance and You Did It! You Did it!. The Chet Baker piece centres on the trumpeter’s last night. Was it suicide or accident when he fell to his death from a hotel window? Harvey gives a more imaginative explanation” “He knows this is one of those/rare days when he can truly fly.” Oklahoma Territory provides a picture of the tough life on the road. The new poems are about love, life and death: the capturing of lost moments which is what all poetry strives to do. Harvey never uses one word too many or one too few in his vista of insights.
Some Days You Do ... 