THE JAZZ OF OUR STREET

by Fatima Shaik ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1998

Shaik's clever, agile celebration of New Orleans jazz is a compact cultural history of the great city where music found feet. The poem starts with a jazz band forming: ""The drum's rhythms tell us/we will have a parade/even though it's not a holiday,"" says the young African-American girl who narrates. As kids and adults tumble into the streets to take a place in the second line--a sinuous, shimmying group dancing behind the band, ready to respond to its every call--Shaik conveys the musicality of the event: ""The band warms up/with odd, jumping notes/that don't seem to match./But then they mend into harmony."" Lewis's handsome watercolors smoothly wed word to image; as the parade winds down, there is a delicious aura of celebration in the air, and lingering on the page.

Pub Date: May 1, 1998

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Dial

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1998

Categories: POETRY