Birth of Uncool: Poems

By: Madeline Walker

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Synopsis: You are at your most uncool now age spotted, raggedy, not giving a shit, saucy, insouciant, real, crackly and juicy at once. —from "Crackly and juicy" Birth of the Cool, a compilation album by jazz great Miles Davis, was released in 1957, the year before I was born. That album defined "cool jazz": elegant, distant, hip, and stylish. Davis and his eight comusicians made it all look so easy. From the time I was very young, I was trying to be as cool as Davis's jazz: aloof, intellectual, desired, mysterious, alluring, and perfect. Only in my fifties did I understand that I had to relinquish this striving and rebirth the uncool parts of me—those bits that are sentimental, awkward, and vulnerable. This book is an eclectic and uncoolly accessible collection of musings on motherhood, childhood, recovery, faith, and love.