Dan Temkin Night Train Jazz Haiku kasen renga: One Hundred Jeffrey Winke's Urban Haiku

LOW-FAT SCHMALTZ A collection of Haiku by Dan Temkin This collection of haiku is dedicated to the memory of Sam Margolis, musician, teacher, and mentor, who when got his chance to play at Carnegie Hall played with smaltz.

A few short words from the Author: This work, Low-Fat Schmaltz, is a collection of haiku selected out of the general mishmash written by myself during the first half of 2005. Low-Fat Schmaltz is in itself a contradiction, with its goal to set a light playful mood. If you do not know schmaltz is a Yiddish word for animal fat, more precisely chicken fat. For six years I played clarinet in a band the primarily played Klezmer, a Jewish folk music in which Sam Margolis was a leader of along with Lori Lippitz. All to often he would tell us in his great baritone voice, “Make sure you play it with schmaltz.” He wasn't suggesting that we coat everything with chicken fat, but that we make sure we play things with the style that is defined as Klezmer. The collection has been organized in a semi-progression, like movements in a work of music. There is not only a connection from page to page but also a connection between the haiku on the same page. The pairings on each page have been quite deliberate to allow for the reader to enjoy each haiku presented to them on their own merit, but then to be only enhanced by the haiku that it was paired with. I hope that you enjoy this collection of haiku that include imagery of music to mental wards, baseball to coffee, love, lost love, and family. ~ Dan Temkin 2005x