Böcker av Jaydn Dewald

In their new pamphlet, Jaydn DeWald offers a haunting meditation on love and loss-a series of grief-induced sketches 'where drums pound // the whispers' and 'a horn wails / [t]he darkness.' What is the difference, asks DeWald, between an incantation and a poem, a ritual and a song? Engaging well-known poets and heretofore unknown forms, Then Darkness embodies the restorative, if not the resurrectional, powers of apostrophe.

Gathering together shards of autobiography, poetry, and critical commentary on music and writing, Sheets of Sound evokes DeWald's experiences as a musician and poet, father and teacher, movie-lover and teenage skater. This debut collection of essays-by turns lyric and philosophic-reflects on jazz improvisation, poetic constraints, writing pedagogy, and the "queer art of failure" (Jack Halberstam), offering fresh perspectives on artists as various as Ellen Douglas, Nicole Mitchell, and Tomoka Shibasaki.