A powerful and beautiful collection of poems.
—Dr Cornel West
Professor, Philosopher, Artist, Activist
There is a grand richness here in The Blackened Blues and these poems may very well keep you up at night. Like good poetry everywhere, it's hard to know where this stuff comes from—but Murphy is a good extractor. He has a great sense for finding subjects, ranging from jazz music to death and transfiguration. But to all his subjects he brings a unique voice, and it will pay you big rewards to listen.
—John Goodman
Former Playbox Jazz Critic, Author of Mingus Speaks
The Blackened Blues is a kaleidoscopic, deep, and opulent journey into the psychic impulses that created the language of a cross section of many great artists in the modern world. It intersects with the construct which is society, and the contradictions that are generated from there. I feel in the portraits of the jazz musicians the rythm and vibration of their brains forging their cosmos, and the transcendence attained generating its own counter strikes—which could lead to silence and or destruction. Many things are explored in these pages, and many questions asked; this was a crucial reading for me.
—Matthew Shipp
American Pianist, Composer, and Bandleader
The blues has often been the shadow of genius and can be considered survival music. There is a hardness wrapped in tenderness in The Blackened Blues. Murphy explores salvation and sorrow: he sees and understands the beautiful blackness—the mood and sensibility that's not restricted by race. Murphy writes about a condition, something linked to art and creativity: the black and white keys of life.
—E. Ethelbert Miller
Writer and Literary Activist, Host of On the Margin (WPFW 89.3 FM)
Sean Murphy's The Blackened Blues offers us a powerful glimpse into the human psyche, exploring the minds of artists and visionaries, addicts and trauma survivors, searching (as we all are) for "some way to live." These poems cut through a history of racism, violence, and tyranny to witness the darkness we are capable of—but also the music and resilience, the "sweetness/ Life lets you steal when it's looking the other way." We leave this book with a heavy dose of truth, but also of the kind of beauty that makes such truth bearable.
—Holly Karapetkova
Arlington County Poet Laureate
In his debut chapbook, The Blackened Blues, Sean Murphy “throw[s] sparks at the darkness,” illuminating the complex lives of characters both real and imagined––from Charlie Parker to Kurt Vonnegut to Captain Ahab. A deft necromancer, Murphy spins a collection of gritty yet lyrical poems that unmask the famous and infamous alike––seeking answers and at times, redemption for his subjects. At its core, this collection is an exploration of “the hot urgency of some holy inspiration.” How is it that the flames of creativity burn brightly in some while consuming others whole? These incandescent poems have some light to shed on the matter.
—Linda Flaherty Haltmaier
Poet Laureate of Andover, MA, Award-winning author of To the Left of the Sun
By turns irreverent, funny, scathing, always intelligent, the poems in The Blackened Blues are Sean Murphy at his virtuosic, full-throated, twelve-bar best. These poems do not “lie down mutely in darkness;” they sing.
—Justen Ahren
author of A Machine for Remembering.
