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Community report

No shhhh here, just music and verse

By SARA KENNEDY
Published April 28, 2006

Jazz and poetry might ordinarily thrive in noisy, crowded bars, but on Sunday it migrated to another environment - the clean, well-lighted Brandon Regional Library, filled with people cramming for final exams and browsing for a good novel.

The plaintive wail of the saxophone and the rich rhythm of poetry drifted through an audience sitting on stiff chairs, and filtered over bookcases and crept into hushed study nooks.

The sixth annual Poetry and Jazz Afternoon honored National Poetry Month, which is observed each year during April. The affair was co-sponsored by Friends of the Brandon Library and Friends of the Library of Tampa-Hillsborough County Inc.

"Want is an eclipse of the self," read poet and college student Susan Tyler, 22, of Tampa before about 50 listeners.

The Philip Booth Trio - vibraphonist, bass player and horn man - improvised behind her, playing a Miles Davis riff that was modern and musically complex.

Later, when Orlando poet Susan Lilley, 52, read a piece about her son learning to play baseball, the musicians shifted effortlessly to something less arcane - a slinky rendition of Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

"They love those fly balls almost like they fear them," she read from her book Night Windows,

"running toward them,

legs like windmills,

and running sort of away,

mitts raised to block the sun.

Their fathers scuff clay and murmur;

no one plans to lose his cool."

The free event celebrated the power of poetry and the passion of jazz, spotlighting performers in a locale where such cultural joys are rare, said Jim Graves, librarian and organizer.

"It's a real neat combination," he added.

Graves asked Booth, 44, leader of long-running Tampa jazz group Greenwich Blue, to assemble a trio especially for the event. Booth called upon veteran vibraphonist Sam Koppelman, 54, of St. Petersburg, who has worked with R&B greats Ashford and Simpson, and Willie Lawson, 45, of Tampa, accomplished on saxophone, flute and clarinet, and a regular with a performance group called the Irritable Tribe of Poets.

The crowd spilled out of the seating area and clogged the refreshment table, where coffee and cookies awaited. The scent of hot coffee mixed with the heavy perfume of fresh gardenias brought from someone's home garden to pass around. The mood of the audience veered from sadness and introspection to laughter and applause, as the performers plumbed the vagaries of the human condition.

Phyllis McEwen, 56, of Tampa had listeners guffawing over the difficulties of sex after 50, with her poem's refrain: "My leg won't stretch that far."

Two women left in the middle, but the majority of the audience stayed until the end and found the afternoon uplifting.

"I came because it's a wonderful opportunity to see people live," said substitute teacher Linda Ludwig of Brandon, "and poetry and music together just fills the senses."

[Last modified April 27, 2006, 13:58:03]