Andy Senior, Poet

For this month’s column, I cede the floor to Michael Steinman, who published the following kind commentary about me on his excellent site, jazzlives.wordpress.com. I offer it here in abridged form and with Michael’s encouragement- A.S. ANDY SENIOR, POET by Michael Steinman Posted August 10, 2022, on jazzlives.wordpress.com I’d say that more than most people, Andy Senior has many selves. JAZZ LIVES readers are likely to have encountered him as the creator and editor of The Syncopated Times; others know him from his internet music program devoted to the sounds of 1900-40, RADIOLA!. I feel fortunate to have met him and his wife Sue in person at a jazz weekend in Connecticut; he is a deep, articulate person, generous in his devotion to the music, with a side of wry darkness in his makeup. But it was only recently that I encountered Andy the poet. I have a long history of reading poetry (studying and writing about Yeats, although that was long ago) and I admire the way it can deliver a variety of shocks to the system, startling as a Sidney Catlett rimshot or as reassuring as Ben Webster’s furry tone. I stumbled over one of Andy’s poems—terse, vinegary, with a kick at the end— on Facebook, a venue I don’t associate with original poetry of value. Andy is completely himself as a poet: he does not write paeans to The Great Dead as did Philip Larkin, nor does he seek to b