Subway Moon

Poetry. Roy Nathanson is an internationally acclaimed jazz composer and saxophonist whose music is inconceivable without his poetry. SUBWAY MOON, his first full book of poetry, was written on Brooklyn's "Q" train and explores the oddly spiritual and intensely public underground space of the New York City Subway through his own internal lens. His words are sounds that he bends and stretches, twists and tucks, until they give up their meanings, until they become notes. As Judith Volmer says, "Rails vibrate the street, window glass splinters a lover's reverie, and these poems tune us into a thousand mysterious sounds, with heart and lyrical muscle." Or says Jeff Friedman, "His is an ancient voice crying out in the wilderness, and his wilderness is the subway."