"The Dream Team" is my attempt to pay tribute to the musicians who played a great concert at Massey Hall, Toronto, 1953, as the epigraph states: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach. Only Gillespie and Roach seem to have led healthy, productive lives outside of music; the others suffered greatly and died sadly. They came from a time when the kind of jazz they were playing, bebop, won acceptance grudgingly. They were indeed famous creators, but once their fame was somewhat assured, they couldn't handle it. The poem is a lament for the way their lives ended.

"On Quiet, Sunny Streets" tries to meditate on the ability, or inability, of music to serve as a private consolation in the face of terrible public violence. I'm sure it does, or can, to an extent. The poem tries to confront that extent.