On the Beach with Chet Baker

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Subtle, artful, and intimate, the themes of these poems encompass many aspects of contemporary life, especially postwar music. With deftness and insight they move from places of stasis and memory, through the uneasy proximities of love captured in the moody jazz trumpet of the title poem, out to the uncharted spaces that loss and death can create. These arresting confessional poems are equally adept at exploring the songs of Elvis Costello and Jacques Brel, bizarre BBC sound effects, Shakespeare's most famous stage direction, and the films of Fellini and Marilyn Monroe, as they are at reflecting on the more mundane details of a bad day at the computer, garden bonfires, or the texture of toast.