American Songbook

de Michael Ruby

"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."--