WELL YOU NEEDN'T

Well You Needn't, Joel Lewis's seventh volume of poetry, gathers his poems about the music that has occupied him since his teenage years. The prose memoir "My Life as a Jazz Fan" weaves its way through the book as the background story to his particular obsession. He has taught at an assortment of places, organized reading series along (or below) the Hudson Palisades and curated lectures at the Poetry Project for two seasons. As a staff writer at the New Jersey performing Arts Center Newark, he wrote program notes and was able to interview many of his jazz heroes. Kim Lyons has noted of his poetry: "There is no one writing quite like him. As if Charles Olson and Susie Timmons had a baby." He shares his Hoboken garret with his wife, film theorist Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, who tolerates the poet's Cecil Taylor albums blaring from his alcove workspace.