Bluecat Jazz & Poetry at St. Johnsbury Academy
by Linda Wooster, St. Johnsbury Academy Library Director
On the afternoon of March 26, St. Johnsbury Academy Library, the Academy English Department, and Kingdom Books jointly sponsored a live jazz improvisation and poetry reading by award-winning poet F.D. Reeve, father of the late actor Christopher Reeve. This spring program of the Fireside Literary series was held in the Academy’s library and was free and open to the public.
Joe Deleault provided a setting of live jazz improvisation for a reading by Reeve from his poetry volume The Blue Cat Walks the Earth (2008). Deleault’s recording credits include Bon Jovi, as well as Zydeco master Clifton Chenier among others. He performs internationally, composes, and works as a session pianist. Together, F.D. Reeve and Joe Deleault have performed The Blue Cat series of programs at the Jazzmouth Festival as well as Off-Broadway.
Before the afternoon program, F.D. Reeve met with students in a Creative Writing class at the Academy. He generously offered to review student poems which were mailed to him ahead of time. The students were enthralled by this unique opportunity, and the charm and wit of the 82-year old Reeve.
A two-time winner of the PEN Syndicated Fiction Award, as well as the Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the May Sarton Award, Alan Tate Award, and the Golden Rose Award of the New England Poetry Society, F.D. Reeve is also a noted translator of Russian literature. In 1964 he accompanied the poet Robert Frost, as his translator, on a cultural exchange trip to Russia and wrote a book about that experience: Robert Frost in Russia. F.D. Reeve lives in southern Vermont and is Professor Emeritus of Letters at Wesleyan University. His poems have been published in many top U.S. literary magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Antioch Review and Sewanee Review. In addition to his translations and ten volumes of published poems, F.D. Reeve has written seven novels, libretti, literary criticism, and essays.
Who is Blue Cat? He’s a sly, hip creature with lots of opinions on the world around him. He uses poetry to express his ideas on art and politics and on life in general. Blue Cat’s wise and funny poems really resonated with our students and it was delightful to see the sixty plus years difference in age between poet and students vanish. After the program, the poet and jazz musician joined students, faculty and friends for Chinese takeout.
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