Ask Me Now

Ask Me Now explores the relationship between the language of music and the music of language with 20 conversations on jazz and literature. Writer, editor, and saxophonist Sascha Feinstein gathers a variety of artists, poets, musicians, fiction writers, essayists, playwrights, and record producers for discussions on the elusive but engaging relationships between jazz and literature.

Featured artists include central figures of the Black Arts Movement such as Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Sonia Sanchez as well as distinguished music critics Gary Giddins, Dan Morgenstern, and Eugene B. Redmond. Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry Yusef Komunyakaa and Philip Levine, outstanding jazz musicians Bill Crow and Fred Hersch, and several writers who cross literary genres: Hayden Carruth, Cornelius Eady, David Jauss, William Matthews, Lee Meitzen Grue, John Sinclair, and Al Young all contribute their thoughts to the book.

Sascha Feinstein is Professor of English at Lycoming College, where he co-directs the Creative Writing Program and edits Brilliant Corners: A Journal of Jazz & Literature. He is author of Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present (IUP, 1991) and has won the Hayden Carruth Award for his poetry collection, Misterioso. He lives in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.