No Eyes: Lester Young

by David Meltzer

A poetic meditation on the last year of tenor saxophonist Lester Young’s life, of joyful playing and self-willed dying.

In 1959, at the age of fifty, jazz greaet Lester Young―a lyrical player, his airy tone haunted by a breathy melancholy―died alone in the Arvin Hotel in Manhattan. As Meltzer explains, “ No Eyes is a book about death, and Young sits in for a metaphor for the artist living and dying for and with his art.”

An “inside” biography, No Eyes is a brilliant jazz-world evocation, composed in free verse whose flow is arrested to capture significant moments, Meltzer creates a layered narrative of vivid colors and textures, the material facts of Young’s story dissolving into internalized, projected truths of erotic understanding and spiritual sympathy with the “sweet and isolate lovely other.”

Genres: Poetry

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2000

About the author

David Meltzer was a poet associated with both the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. A pioneer of jazz poetry readings, Meltzer also formed a psychedelic folk-rock group. He performed with the music and poetry review, "Rockpile." He edited many anthologies, including San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (City Lights, 2001), and published 11 erotic novels. He taught for many years in the poetics program at New College of California.

Reviews

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is both sad and fun to read, both authentic and hip. If you love jazz, you will certainly appreciate Meltzer's rhythms and jive, along with his evocations of a long-ago period in music history. (If you don't love jazz, this is the moment to go out and listen to a bunch of it.) When Meltzer uses first person in the poems, I can't tell whether he's speaking for Lester Young or reporting his own feelings, but I'm sure a lot that's personal to Meltzer is wrapped up in these poems. There's also a lot of repetition of themes and words, but it's like hearing a jazz standard over and over, always with a new angle.

[cam · Rating 2 out of 5]

very musical and very wordy.

[Phil Overeem · Rating 3 out of 5]

This set of poems was inspired by a forlorn photo of Prez late in his short life--and, of course, by Lester's music. Meltzer somewhat inconsistently captures the lightness, grace, and sorrow of Young's music while trying to see the world through the saxophonist's eyes. Too often, the poetry feels too facile and repetitious. Still, recommended to fans.

[Len · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meltzer is wriging about Jazz, more accurately about a rather pathetic figure in the jazz realm... but he does it with a voice and resonance that is lamentable that its almost unspeakable... yeah read this book, it's jazz, its poetry, its poetic jazz, its jazzy words...