
Riffs is a fantastic piece of poetic fiction. While it would be trite to say it's a roller coaster ride, the more accepted cliche for this book seems to be jazz music. Both comparisons work. The story behind the poems is a love affair- the beginning, the middle, and the end. And Lee takes you through all the beautiful and sordid details while capturing the emotions of such a tale as only a brilliant poet can. When he's ecstatic the poems are erratic. When he's contemplative, the poems are structured. When he's horny, he's heavy on the "h" words. I can't stress enough how much I loved this book.
Occasionally, it was easy to conjure up images of Mike Myers in So I Married An Axe Murderer with his cliched jazz/hip lingo (jive, hot potato momma, cosmos, and so on) and I'm sure some people might find it distracting or annoying, but to me, it just gave the voice a character, or maybe it gave the character a voice, ya dig?
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