Poets who can write prose that equals their poetry are rare.
With this collection of thirteen new short stories, Wanda
Coleman, Los Angeles's unofficial poet laureate, proves an
exception to the rule yet again. Jazz and Twelve O'Clock
Tales owes its title to the lyrics of "Lush Life" by Billy
Strayhorn, Duke Ellington's right-hand man. Like the
heartbroken lover of Strayhorn's song, the characters in
these stories lead lonely lives full of longing, of
potential stifled by racism, poverty, and absurd accidents
of fate. And yet, even though they are trapped by the
present moment, their inner lives are lush, a mirror of the
city of angels in which they live, a metropolis, "always
simmering," as Coleman writes in the final story, "ever
waiting to be borne on that balmy promised crescendo."
Coleman applies a poet's economy of words to her fiction,
setting a scene with lightning-quick strokes, letting a
detail, a dialogue, or the brisk vernacular speak for
itself. Or, alternatively, she will step in and take center
stage, an omniscient voice seeing beyond the impending and
inevitable tragedy, but powerless to change either narrative
or outcome. Powerless, that is, only within the bounds of
the story, for Coleman is an author devoted to change,
personal and political, writing to affect the balance of
power in America. "Nothing will satisfy me," she has
written, "short of an open society and social parity."
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