Five Lines No Waiting

Book excerpt: Poetry. Art. Music. Now in an expanded second edition, this collection of alert, witty, and world-wise limericks by the great New Orleans jazz pianist and composer Tom McDermott, illustrated with his own drawings, is a snapshot of a restlessly creative mind and heart at play. These "personal nursery rhymes" demonstrate that simplicity of means need not be incompatible with sophistication of ends. In all their various modes--the frivolously comic, the self-deprecating, the wistful, the gently mocking, the philosophical--a very individual elegance and generosity of spirit are always to be found.