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239 pages, 1993
$20.00 paper, 0-87745-423-X, 978-0-87745-423-6
"Writing about jazz is no easy matter. Its pleasures and its artistry have no precedent in aesthetics. Here's a new American art form of which we have rarely had an adequate description. It is appropriate that a great poet should be the one who finds the words for that experience. Hayden Carruth has written one of the finest books on jazz we have."—Charles Simic
"Sitting In is a book about art, about participation, about the cultures of jazz and poetry: the homage of a white poet and jazz musician to the greatness of the African American gift to the sensibility of this country. But, more than this, it's a book about our extremes—personal and public—a book that defies critical boundaries—a book of passion, conscience, and contradictions. Poets and musicians should read it, students of multiculturalism should read it; all those with hopes for our national future should read it. And keep going back to the music."—Adrienne Rich
This collection of essays and poems about the influence of jazz on writing and culture in this country, an expanded edition of the 1986 publication, is a rewarding volume for all those entranced by jazz. Carruth brings his considerable poetic and literary sensibilities to bear on a topic very near to his heart: "Those who are devoted primarily to jazz, to poetry, to all the arts, are also those who contribute more intelligently than others to our practical and moral, political and social, advancement."
Hayden Carruth is professor emeritus at Syracuse University. He has published more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, criticism, and fiction and has edited several anthologies, including The Voice That Is Great Within Us. He was awarded the National Book Critics Circle for poetry for Collected Shorter Poems 1946-1991.
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