Sascha Feinstein

Sascha Feinstein is the co-founder and director of Lycoming College's Creative Writing Program. He is a poet himself, and a jazz historian; his father and mother were both artists, as was another of his father's wives; the people he met growing up included painters, sculptors, teachers, musicians. Aside from whatever genetic gifts were his legacy, he must have absorbed every shred of the brilliance that surrounded him during his early years, because it shines from his prose, his poetry and his personality. (Having met him I can attest to the latter. I urge you to sample the writing for yourself.) I was amazed to realize that he could describe one of his father’s abstract paintings with such clarity that my mind formed an image of the work. I’ve no idea if it’s an accurate image, (the book has no photos) but it’s pretty real to me.

Growing up in New York City, Sascha did not find his father’s proclivity for "collecting" to be strange. His mother, he says, was a moderating influence, and since any excursion with his father was a treat, the odd things they might find and bring home were secondary to the experience for Sascha. His father didn’t hoard newspapers, canned goods or household products. There's no suggestion that he let the kitchen garbage pile up inside the house. But he did often squirrel away new things, like shirts and pocket knives, because they were "too good" to use, and never threw away anything "that might someday be useful". He was a dumpster diver who had art in mind when he gathered broken furniture, cast-off industrial equipment and discarded pipe fragments; once when the sidewalk was being torn up down the street, he talked the workmen into depositing a truckload of the broken-up concrete at the entrance to their courtyard. Apparently his wives were able to keep him from filling the actual living spaces with his "collections" for most of his life. By the time he died, however, he had three properties---five buildings altogether---stashed to the rafters with mostly trash. The brownstone Sascha grew up in had four floors, two of which were solid with junk even during his childhood. We don’t really learn what condition the rest of it was in when his father died, because his stepmother was still living in it, and it was not Sascha’s responsibility. The two properties he did inherit were not full-time residences, and one of the buildings was an otherwise unused barn. He assures us that he moved, and mostly discarded, several tons of "legacy" in his quest to return a Cape Cod vacation property to livable condition.

Wreckage is a son's memoir of clearing out layers and layers of raw material for unrealized projects both practical and artistic; of rediscovering and salvaging neglected paintings, sculptures, pottery and textile art created by his parents; of bringing his own vision to bear on what seemed to be hopelessly derelict properties, and as he said, of "taking on my father". Inevitably I found myself comparing Sam Feinstein's hoarding to that described in E. L. Doctorow's Homer and Langley. In fact, Sascha Feinstein makes reference to the parallels himself. But Sam was no recluse. He was a well-recognized abstract impressionist, a revered art teacher, and a beloved, if somewhat difficult, parent. The book is as much about the father-son relationship, and the son’s coming to terms with it in order to preserve his own past, as it is about the nitty-gritty of dealing with decades of debris and decay.… (altro)

Sascha Feinstein’s website says he is a “poet, essayist, and editor”. Well, that’s an understated summary of the basics. The site goes on to list his big accomplishments, but without fanfare. (For a saxophonist, he’s not that great at blowing his own horn!) Feinstein is the founder and editor of Brilliant Corners, a literary journal of jazz-related poetry, fiction and non-fiction—the only national journal on that subject. He has collaborated with Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa to compile two volumes of jazz poetry, and has written a fair bit about jazz himself, including a collection of interviews with artists and critics called Ask Me Now and two volumes of his own criticism of jazz poetry. He hosts a weekly radio show on the Central PA NPR outlet, WVIA/WVYA FM, called Jazz Standards. I want to praise him to the rafters, not just for his accomplishments, but for who he is. Full and fair disclosure: Sascha Feinstein is Chair of the English department at the small liberal arts college that is alma mater to me and several other members of my family; my daughter was enrolled in the Creative Writing program he co-founded there, although she never took a course from him; my husband once worked for the TV/radio station referred to above. OH, and I don’t care for jazz. Still, with total objectivity, I think this man is an American treasure. He is the only poet I have ever heard do a reading without making me wince, and I’m glad he has also written two memoirs, ‘cause I like to read those, and this one was aces.
Sascha Feinstein grew up in a brownstone in New York City. His parents, Anita Askild and Sam Feinstein, were artists, and most people would probably think “bohemian” if asked to describe their lifestyle. Although he only touches lightly on the subject in this book, Sascha’s father was also a hoarder, and whole rooms of their sprawling apartment were virtually inaccessible. (A second memoir, Wreckage: My Father's Legacy of Art and Junk, deals with that issue.) Black Pearls is Sascha’s exploration of the last year of his mother’s life, and how it affected the man he grew to be. When he was 17, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Even then, music offered him solace and escape, but he was just beginning to learn his way around the jazz landscape. A visiting friend of Anita’s (having sought the advice of a record store employee as to who was “good”) brought him two Coltrane LPs picked at random from the bin-- Ascension and Black Pearls. He spun Ascension first (without reading the liner notes, which might have warned him). Finding it compelling but bewildering, he shelved it for months, and did not even take the shrink wrap off Black Pearls, thereby furnishing himself with a perfect metaphor for that difficult year. Sometime during his senior year in high school, his music teacher mentioned Coltrane, and got a lukewarm response from Sascha. The teacher sat him down to remedy the situation with a few more appropriate selections for a beginner. The rest is, well, you know. As befits the work of a jazz musician, this memoir is not a chronological narrative. It began as a personal journey to recapture lost memories, but resulted in a collection of essays that riff on a theme with heart-touching variations. Beautiful stuff, even for non-jazz-lovers.… (altro)

Sacsha Feinstein, the editor of Brilliant Corners, a review of "jazz literature" has released what is a collection of poetry and other literature based in large measure on personal interviews he has conducted over the last 10 years with literary artists as well as musical ones. And the musical ones as well as the literary ones have much to tell not only about music but how we as humans relate to and understand it. Feinstein is a brilliant interviewer and gets his guests to open up about their inspiration in a way that allows for meaningful conversation about memories of the days, for example, of Coltrane and Mingus as well as people like Amiri Baraka, whose social criticism of America and its relationship to Black people still pertains today, a concept that will surprise no-one reading this. The stories that are told by, for example, the sidemen who witnessed what is essentially the beginnings of bebop and before are just utterly fascinating to anyone with a heart for music but who, like me, is not musically trained but can, fortunately, interpret words on an emotional level. And the words that Feinstein puts into this book are simultaneously enlightening, striking, sometimes sad, always relevant (especially given the utter sameness of money-driven music today) and essential.… (altro)