Publisher's Synopsis
"Poetry. The poems in AMERICAN SONGBOOK are based on phrases from more than fifty 20th century songs. The singers range from Memphis Minnie to Tupac Shakur, and songs from Louis Armstrong's hit "What a Wonderful World" to Hattie Ellis's "Desert Blues," a little-known Lomax prison recording. Many musical traditions inform the poems, including blues, jazz, gospel, country, folk, bluegrass, electric blues, R&B, rock, disco and hip hop."In their careful reading of real and imaginary signs these poems bring peripheral and liminal perception into focus. At the intersection of form and voice--of how something can be said and what meaning might intend--Michael Ruby folds everyday utterance into astonishing fact. These plaintive and destabilized voicings offer the necessary means to discover what is immediately before us."--Peter Gizzi"--.
