Bards Against Hunger Kansas City

A poem of mine appears in the anthology Bards Against Hunger Kansas City on pages 12-13. It is too difficult to get a picture of the poem, so I am pasting in a copy.

James P. Cooper

Knowing When Not to Speak 

Despite my profession, I don’t discuss

subordinate clauses with the kids selling

cookies in front of the grocery store.

I don’t ask the pharmacist to give me 

three correlative conjunctions along with

my prescriptions. I don’t ask the person

in produce where the conjunctive adverbs 

are located. I don’t ask the person

needing my help to reach something 

from a top shelf to give me three signal verbs 

in exchange. I don’t ask the person saying 

“excuse me” in dairy to point me toward 

the coordinate conjunctions. I don’t ask 

the person ringing up my groceries to define 

and use an appositive in a sentence. 

Afterwards, at the post office, I don’t ask 

the clerk handing me my change to add 

three present participles to my purchase.

“We all have our specialties,” my doctor says,

when I ask her to check my lungs

for subordinate conjunctions. As we talk, 

I offer to write a prescription for comma 

splices and fused sentences, but she says 

she may call for an appointment when she needs 

to insert semicolons in between

main clauses that are related in some way.

Accepting Submissions for Poetry Chapbooks

Choeofpleirn Press is accepting poetry chapbooks of 25 to 40 pages for our annual chapbook contest. The contest is for poets who have not yet published a full-length collection. The deadline is April 30. Refer to the following link for more information: https://www.choeofpleirnpress.com/poetry-chapbook-contest

This contest will be our last chapbook contest because starting in 2027, we will be switching to a contest for full-length poetry collections.

Our previous winner was Christine Andersen's To Maggie Wherever You've Gone.

Jazz Favorites for 2024

I never got the chance to include my jazz favorites for 2024 on this blog earlier. My selections appears below in no particular order. With the exception of the Jakob Bro, these albums can be found on Bandcamp.

Jasmine Myra's places much more attention on her saxophone in Rising, her second release. My students, most of whom are in their teens or early twenties, have responded positively to Jasmine Myra's music when I shared one of the cuts from this album.

 

Matthew Halsall's Bright Sparkling Light, recorded during the An Ever Changing View sessions, features three more compositions, approximately twenty-four minutes of music.

Jakob Bro's Taking Turns, a kind of sequel to December Song and Time, features another opportunity to hear Lee Konitz and some of the other musicians from those sessions. 

Sunna Gunnlaugs' Ástin, bjartsýnin og andskotans blaðrið í fólkin (roughly translated as "Love, Optimism, and Damn Babbling in People") features seven poems written by Jón úr Vör, the Icelandic poet, which Sunna Gunnlaugs has set to music. Although I don't know Icelandic, the music appeals to me and makes me wonder what the poems say if they were translated into English. It is hard to find many translations of Jón úr Vör, I've discovered. I don't know of many poets writing in English whose poems could be set to jazz.

Favorite Jazz Releases_2025

My favorite jazz releases during 2025 are included below but in no particular order. Although Soren Bebe's Gratitude had been made available in 2025, it won't officially be released until 2026.

These favorite jazz releases are Matt Carmichael's dancing with embers, Chip Wickham's The Eternal Now, Anouar Brahem's The Last Sky, and Fergus McCreadie's The Shieling. With the exception of the Anouar Brahem, these albums can be found on Bandcamp.