Things I Must Have Known

A.B. Spellman sacrificed poetry publication when he began working for the National Endowment of the Arts, where he soon became a hero to struggling arts organizations and countless writers-all of whom are thrilled to help his new book succeed. It is no exaggeration to say that this new book is eagerly and enthusiastically awaited. Touching on jazz and friendship, fatherhood and racism, urban violence and workplace politics, his confident and animated poetry addresses the most important personal and public events of the last sixty years-of how it felt to grow up black in a Jim Crow world; of hearing John Coltrane soar through space on his cascading scales; and the compromises of a long marriage and a richly lived life. Not only a legend in Arts circles, A.B. Spellman is one of the country's leading jazz scholars. He has been a regular commentator on jazz for National Public Radio and is the author of Four Lives in the Bebop Business, a classic in the field of jazz criticism that is now available as Four Jazz Lives. In recognition of Spellman's commitment and service to jazz, the NEA named one of its prestigious Jazz Masters awards the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.