“What I can offer to readers of this review is the endorsement of Jéanpaul Ferro’s collection of work in Jazz, and an invitation to read them aloud to friends.”

Karen Bowles, Pirene’s Fountain

“Jéanpaul Ferro’s poems welcome you in and pour you a glass of the good stuff, with sinuous music in the background and dark wind in the trees outside to make you want to stay.”

Tom Chandler, Providence Journal

“Jéanpaul Ferro’s Jazz is full of this gut-wrenching diversity that moves us through a realm of heartbreaking worlds full of longing and contradiction. It is high art. It is modern life. It is the very world that we all see around us. As a whole, Jazz is a time capsule for the past ten years of American life.”

Rachel Lancaster, Rattle

“One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from Jéanpaul Ferro’s Poem #27: “I have seen things that a slip of paper cannot hold…” Not only is this line and poem so poignant, but the truth is Jéanpaul can take a slip of paper and consistently manage to hang together wondrous, richly conceived vignettes like fresh linens on a line.”

Debra Marlar, Editor-In-Chief, Goldfish Press

“Jéanpaul Ferro’s work reaches inside the human heart and pulls out into the light what we often ignore. Poignant and articulate, Ferro should be considered one of the great voices of our generation.”

Corrine De Winter, Stoker Award Winner and Author of “Virgin of the Apocalypse”

“The poems of Jazz deal with everything from themes of love, loss, war, and the individuals relationship to the rest of the world around them. Like Whitman, Ginsberg, Dylan, and so many other poets before him, Ferro often writes about the promise and betrayal of American democracy.”

Thomas Alexander

The Greek Isles

I used to see her along the side street,
selling her pears and oranges like they were
the most important thing in the world,

she had dark hair and dark eyes and I know her family
came from this very dark place in the black passages
of Spain,

once I heard her crying in the bathroom before
she came out her bamboo door,

I saw the sights that day
like the diamond shine that was always right there in the Greek Isles,

until one day she was gone from her post,

all the pears and oranges spilling right down the
side street like the insides of an animal that had
just been slaughtered,

the trees all around me shaking like beautiful fat
women wading in the waves,

a blood spot on the ground where she was killed
for six euros and some almonds.

Click here to read a full excerpt of Jazz.