In many ways, Fresno saxophonist/composer Benjamin Boone is in the vanguard of the jazz/poetry movement. Last year he released his captivating collaboration with the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Philip Levine, The Poetry of Jazz (Origin), which garnered glowing praise everywhere from The Paris Review to JazzTimes and Downbeat. He followed up in January with The Poetry of Jazz, Vol. 2 (Origin), another musical excursion into the heart of Levine's work that was recorded during the same sessions that produced the first album. Levine, who died in 2015 at the age of 87, was one of America's most celebrated poets, earning the National Book Award for Poetry twice, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1994 volume The Simple Truth. An avid jazz fan, Levine found an ideal musical collaborator in his fellow California State University, Fresno professor, whose music is as emotionally direct, unpretentious and irascibly open-hearted as the poet's verse.