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Jazz Funeral
Following the success of her first two volumes, Body and Soul and Rhythm and Booze, Julie Kane has written a brilliant new book that proves once again how surprisingly vital the sonnet can be. From the transgressive "Bitch" to "Mockingbird" with its "pretty girl in crosshairs of a gun," Kane's opening sequence parallels the jazz funeral's "March to the Graveyard," mordant without ever slipping into the maudlin, highly spiced and knowing.
- GenresPoetry
58 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
33 people want to read
About the author
Julie Kane
28 books7 followersJulie Kane is a contemporary American poet, scholar, and editor. She was the Louisiana Poet Laureate for the 2011–2013 term.
Although born in Massachusetts, Kane has lived in Louisiana for over three decades and writes about the region with the doubled consciousness of a non-native. Her work shows the influence of the Confessional poets; indeed, she was a student in Anne Sexton's graduate poetry seminar at Boston University at the time of Sexton's suicide. She is also associated with the New Formalist movement in contemporary poetry, although she has published free verse as well as formal verse. Her formal poems tend to bend the "rules" of poetic forms and employ slant rhyme.
She is the winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, judged by Louise Glück. Other awards include the Lewis P. Simpson Award, the 2002 National Poetry Series for Rhythm & Booze (selected by Maxine Kumin), and the 2009 Donald Justice Poetry Prize.
Although born in Massachusetts, Kane has lived in Louisiana for over three decades and writes about the region with the doubled consciousness of a non-native. Her work shows the influence of the Confessional poets; indeed, she was a student in Anne Sexton's graduate poetry seminar at Boston University at the time of Sexton's suicide. She is also associated with the New Formalist movement in contemporary poetry, although she has published free verse as well as formal verse. Her formal poems tend to bend the "rules" of poetic forms and employ slant rhyme.
She is the winner of the Academy of American Poets Prize, judged by Louise Glück. Other awards include the Lewis P. Simpson Award, the 2002 National Poetry Series for Rhythm & Booze (selected by Maxine Kumin), and the 2009 Donald Justice Poetry Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 10, 2016
As much as I enjoyed Kane's Rhythm and Booze, I think I like this one even more. It could be that I could relate to so much in it, it could be the humor that pops out in the most unexpected places, it could be that I like the sonnet form more than I ever knew -- most likely, it is all these things.
The book is divided into 3 parts. The first is titled 'The March to the Graveyard,' which may sound depressing but is not at all. The second is a eulogy (in the shape of a corona, which I don't think I'd heard of before -- used here, it's such an effective form, causing the last line to be perfect, as it reflects back to the first line) for an man I knew as a friend of my aunt and, by extension, my mother too. I'd been to his coffeehouse, a meeting place for poets, so I recognize the "plywood boards" that were the windows of the coffeehouse Kane mentions in one of this section's sonnets. She also mentions, by first name, friends of his that I remember meeting and hearing about over the years. One name, Father Karl, brought me up short, because he was a friend of my family, someone I knew well. I'm sure these things drew me even further in.
The third section, 'Cutting the Body Loose,' (which is the celebratory ending to a jazz funeral) is just as strong and intimate, with its references to post-Katrina New Orleans, past lovers, hermit crabs, baseball, old books and purple martins.
You can't go wrong with these beautiful poems.
The book is divided into 3 parts. The first is titled 'The March to the Graveyard,' which may sound depressing but is not at all. The second is a eulogy (in the shape of a corona, which I don't think I'd heard of before -- used here, it's such an effective form, causing the last line to be perfect, as it reflects back to the first line) for an man I knew as a friend of my aunt and, by extension, my mother too. I'd been to his coffeehouse, a meeting place for poets, so I recognize the "plywood boards" that were the windows of the coffeehouse Kane mentions in one of this section's sonnets. She also mentions, by first name, friends of his that I remember meeting and hearing about over the years. One name, Father Karl, brought me up short, because he was a friend of my family, someone I knew well. I'm sure these things drew me even further in.
The third section, 'Cutting the Body Loose,' (which is the celebratory ending to a jazz funeral) is just as strong and intimate, with its references to post-Katrina New Orleans, past lovers, hermit crabs, baseball, old books and purple martins.
You can't go wrong with these beautiful poems.
December 14, 2021
Pop culture was a train that passed us by
on tracks like those near the suspension bridge
from Destrehan to Luling, swamp to swamp,
on which they found your empty car, igni-
tion off; and Nancy said you might have hopped
a freight train, made it look as if you’d jumped;
you might be starting up a new Borsodi’s
somewhere yet un-Disneyed and un-Trumped.
And when they couldn’t find your body, I
kept hoping she was right, it wasn’t real:
the divers dredging in the muddy river
under that stretch of rust-colored steel
that could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
to look like part of nature on its site.
from A Hobo's Crown for Robert Borsodi
Julie Kane’s Jazz Funeral is an oddly-arranged but captivating assortment of sonnets. The opening page pulls a definition of “jazz funeral” from Wikipedia, and then divides the material into three “jazz funeral” sections: The March to the Graveyard, The Eulogy, and Cutting the Body Loose.
The March to the Graveyard are fourteen sonnets based around mortality and death, be it one’s mother, one’s player piano, one’s cat, or a Cardinal or Mockingbird once active in the backyard. Kane’s conversational style contained within a sonnet reveal the power still existent in the form. The poems probe and examine for twelve lines and then conclude in couplets of astonishing insight. I recently read Rita Dove’s Mother Love, but while Dove does not confine herself to the sonnet form for the entire collection, Kane does. For each section, Kane has 14 poems of 14-line sonnets.
“The Eulogy” recounts the death of Robert Borsodi, a Yale-educated drama student, who came to New Orleans in the 1970s and opened coffee houses and often hopped freight trains out of town whenever the call came over him. “Terminally ill with bone cancer and lacking health insurance, he committed suicide by jumping from the Hale Boggs Bridge into the Mississippi River on October 25, 2003.” For Borsodi’s kindness and eccentric mentoring, Kane’s creates a touching eulogy in which Borsodi, New Orleans before Katrina's transformations, and even a literary movement are defined and whose passings are mourned. Housed in the center of the entire work, this section is the heart of the entire collection.
“Cutting the Body Loose,” the segment of a Jazz funeral where participants celebrate the life of the deceased and his/her entry into the afterlife with dancing and song, is the least cohesive of the three sections. The themes are all over the map: the scent of sweet olives, nostalgia for the New Orleans of pre-Katrina, the death of her father, finding a copy of her chapbook in a used bookstore in New Orleans, the way her old boyfriend avoided the missionary position in sex when climaxing. The series ends with “Purple Martin Suite,” a suite of sonnets describing the migration of purple martins under the Pontchartrain Causeway in the autumn.
Overall, this is a fascinating collection resonates with people and places. Kane functions in the confessional school of poetry, no doubt, but she transforms them into sonnets of emotion and universal insight. I highly recommend this collection.
The Killing Field
A tell-tale pile of feathers in the yard
this morning, tip-off to a murder scene:
as if some nut had slit a pillowcase
or down-filled parka bought from L.L. Bean.
Detective work reveals the down is gray,
the longer feathers barred in gray and white,
which means the victim was a mockingbird,
the only bird that likes to sing at night;
like yelling "Here I am!" to thugs with guns.
By noon the criminal has been ID'd,
the tom I feed too full to come around
for day-old chow my two cats didn't eat.
Can't read the paper (nothing but the war)
or hold back moral judgment any more.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
Get Me Out of Here <--------> In a Kingdom of Birds
on tracks like those near the suspension bridge
from Destrehan to Luling, swamp to swamp,
on which they found your empty car, igni-
tion off; and Nancy said you might have hopped
a freight train, made it look as if you’d jumped;
you might be starting up a new Borsodi’s
somewhere yet un-Disneyed and un-Trumped.
And when they couldn’t find your body, I
kept hoping she was right, it wasn’t real:
the divers dredging in the muddy river
under that stretch of rust-colored steel
that could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
to look like part of nature on its site.
from A Hobo's Crown for Robert Borsodi
Julie Kane’s Jazz Funeral is an oddly-arranged but captivating assortment of sonnets. The opening page pulls a definition of “jazz funeral” from Wikipedia, and then divides the material into three “jazz funeral” sections: The March to the Graveyard, The Eulogy, and Cutting the Body Loose.
The March to the Graveyard are fourteen sonnets based around mortality and death, be it one’s mother, one’s player piano, one’s cat, or a Cardinal or Mockingbird once active in the backyard. Kane’s conversational style contained within a sonnet reveal the power still existent in the form. The poems probe and examine for twelve lines and then conclude in couplets of astonishing insight. I recently read Rita Dove’s Mother Love, but while Dove does not confine herself to the sonnet form for the entire collection, Kane does. For each section, Kane has 14 poems of 14-line sonnets.
“The Eulogy” recounts the death of Robert Borsodi, a Yale-educated drama student, who came to New Orleans in the 1970s and opened coffee houses and often hopped freight trains out of town whenever the call came over him. “Terminally ill with bone cancer and lacking health insurance, he committed suicide by jumping from the Hale Boggs Bridge into the Mississippi River on October 25, 2003.” For Borsodi’s kindness and eccentric mentoring, Kane’s creates a touching eulogy in which Borsodi, New Orleans before Katrina's transformations, and even a literary movement are defined and whose passings are mourned. Housed in the center of the entire work, this section is the heart of the entire collection.
“Cutting the Body Loose,” the segment of a Jazz funeral where participants celebrate the life of the deceased and his/her entry into the afterlife with dancing and song, is the least cohesive of the three sections. The themes are all over the map: the scent of sweet olives, nostalgia for the New Orleans of pre-Katrina, the death of her father, finding a copy of her chapbook in a used bookstore in New Orleans, the way her old boyfriend avoided the missionary position in sex when climaxing. The series ends with “Purple Martin Suite,” a suite of sonnets describing the migration of purple martins under the Pontchartrain Causeway in the autumn.
Overall, this is a fascinating collection resonates with people and places. Kane functions in the confessional school of poetry, no doubt, but she transforms them into sonnets of emotion and universal insight. I highly recommend this collection.
The Killing Field
A tell-tale pile of feathers in the yard
this morning, tip-off to a murder scene:
as if some nut had slit a pillowcase
or down-filled parka bought from L.L. Bean.
Detective work reveals the down is gray,
the longer feathers barred in gray and white,
which means the victim was a mockingbird,
the only bird that likes to sing at night;
like yelling "Here I am!" to thugs with guns.
By noon the criminal has been ID'd,
the tom I feed too full to come around
for day-old chow my two cats didn't eat.
Can't read the paper (nothing but the war)
or hold back moral judgment any more.
Louisiana Poetry Reviews
Get Me Out of Here <--------> In a Kingdom of Birds
October 8, 2023
A marvelous book of poetry.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews