The Mirror in Our Music

Fred L. Joiner

Birds, LLC is proud to make Fred L. Joiner's much-awaited debut poetry collection, The Mirror in Our Music, available for pre-order.


The Mirror in Our Music is a nearly 200-page, full-color do-si-do document chronicling Joiner's decades of community building and collaboration with countless poets, musicians, artists, photographers, and ancestors.


"When considering Fred Joiner’s nimble reflections and sharply observed personal and political nuances, ruminations of which make up a kind of aesthetic/esthetic inner life, I am reminded of the ten-year span of letters between Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray in Trading Twelves, in which they riff and wax poetic on life, literature, travel, family, philosophy, politics, art, aesthetics, music, racism, identity, and such, in a sense a running dialogue reminiscent of the exchange between two jazz musicians in a jam session, improvising twelve bars of music around the same musical idea—trading twelves. In this regard, what Joiner manages in The Mirror in Our Music is a triad: an exchange between the Poem and the Music and Art.


Joiner could’ve put out a collection of poetry decades ago. But he was 'woodshedding,' as he likes to say. He was in fact honing his skills because he has that much respect for poetry—and the music! This is sacred ground to him. Holy water and altar. It is about revering ancestors and the power of the word and a higher being. And thus, here we are." — Tony Medina


Learn more about the Book…

Print: $20 (Pre-Order)

Catalog