Who needs jazz? Who needs poetry? Who needs poetry about jazz? It’s safe to say that J.D. Carpenter thinks we could all use a bit of both. And, by the end of this slender, thoughtful volume, one cannot help but agree with him.

J. D. Carpenter is a Prince Edward County resident and prolific author of poetry and fiction. He is beloved for his series of mystery novels set in the County. Many of his poems evoke familiar places as well. But in his most recent collection, All Us Cats on Stage: Jazz Poems, he takes us elsewhere, to more urban spaces.

By the looks of it Mr. Carpenter and I must have crossed paths at a jazz club in Toronto. I’m too young to have heard Duke Ellington at Massey Hall, but I know I was at the same Phil Woods gig he was at the Bermuda Onion. I don’t remember the trombonist “pulling back from the brink / –another few bars / and no one could have saved him.” But I do I remember the trombonist playing at the edge of the stage with his slide coming dangerously near a woman in the front row.

This slim volume celebrates listeners relinquishing control to performers and performers relinquishing control to higher powers, sacrificing themselves for their music (there are several elegies for the dead).
Many of the short-lined poems are about particular performances, capturing an image or a mood, conveying what it was like to be there, the intensity of getting lost in a performance: “he made us tremble,/ made us hot,/ made us shiver;” or the romantic desperation of performers giving their all, “the jerking,/ bending, blind-eyed horn men/ spraying from hairtips the open-/ mouthed drinkers.” Many of the poems require some insider jazz knowledge — players, song names, stories. But, cumulatively, this collection conveys not just its particulars, but the feeling of a life lived musically, of a humanity shared through its melodies: a father and daughter expressing their love by listening to the radio together, a teacher remembered for introducing us to music.

Poetically, these poems are modest. Some flirt with rhyme, especially at the conclusion; one takes the visual shape of a trumpet bell; others are cleverly organized lists. Line breaks and juxtaposed images do the work of an impressionist painting.

If you only know Mr. Carpenter for his detective Joe Horn, you may want to find this volume for a different experience altogether.