A Review of Riff: The Shake Keane Story

Riff: The Shake Keane Story (Papillote Press, 164 pp., paperback, 2021) is the biography of the Vincentian poet-jazz musician Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (1927-1997). Keane is St Vincent’s best-known (perhaps its only) poet with an international reputation. Less known is the fact that he is most likely St Vincent’s most accomplished jazz musician. Written by Barbadian-based Vincentian author Philip Nanton, this biography, though brief, is thoroughly researched, and is erudite in content and style.

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Photo Copyright © 2020 by John Robert Lee—socially distanced.

for Ann-Margaret Lim

 

“To the saints who are in Ephesus.”  Ephesians 1:1

Rainbow in Balata

Meadow Dream.  Copyright © 2016 by Shallon Fadlien.

 

(for SF)

A story for you—

            in late afternoon drizzle

coming home through familiar Balata

its blossoming gardens of mangoes, gloricidia

 

            and palms’ branches like multi-winged cherubim — in that light

a huge rainbow, close as heaven, spectrum a palette

of red to indigo and her sister violet

 

            and I saw the end down a footpath

settled like a full-bodied beauty on a bench