Thursday, March 09, 2006

Thirteen Ways of Playing the Dozens

If you know my work, you know there's a couple of poems where I have beef with Wallace Stevens (Monday Poem, The Idea of Improvisation), there are several reasons for this, but at least one of them is that I'm not a big fan of his work. I respect his technical facility and ear, but all that 'jerking the poem to the left until it turns on itself' bullshit gets annoying after a while. He's also one of the few major American poets who was openly racist in his work (he titled one poem 'Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery') Anyway, I don't get mad, I get even, this is my riff on his famous Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird


(This poem is of one mind,
like a crayon box
in which there are
twelve blues.)

Anyway here's the piece:


TWELVE WAYS OF LISTENING TO THE BLUES

1
Along the guitar's six strings,
The only moving thing
Is the hand of the Blues.

2
I am of two minds,
Like a blues
Which makes you laugh,
Then cry.

3
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and the Blues
Are one.

4
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inhalations
Or the beauty of exhalations,
The Blues harmonica moans.

5
Bottles line the long bar

With exquisite glass.
The spirit of the Blues

Fills them, bottom to top.
The sound casts
Intoxicating spells.

6
O Snowmen of Hartford,
Why do you imagine blackbirds?
Do you not see how the Blues
Caress the collarbones
Of the women around you?

7
I know sassy women
And joyous, laughing rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the Blues is involved
In what I know.

8
When the Blues flow out of earshot,
They cause a rising tide
in many rivers.

9
At the sound of the Blues
In a district of red light,
Even violinists of the symphony
Would smile openly.

10

He rode through Mississippi
In a boxcar.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The moan of a passing train
For the Blues.

11
A bad moon is rising.
The Blues must be playing.

12
It was midnight all evening.
It was raining
And it was going to rain.
The Blues colored
The clouds.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

joel i wish you could have found a way to include the "i am of two minds stanza" I can see your conflict the image is a strong image -- yet you feel loyal to the structural intergrety of the the piece. I would go with function over form -- the beauty of the poem would be more inhanced by a feature worth staring at to understand its beauty rather than a form that beauty is ignored since it is already implied.

PS busboys and poet are doing a homeless reading (benifit?) on the 28th

pss did you know you are not included in S. Feinsteins bibliography of Jazz/Poetry. He by his own admission has not claimed it is comprehsive and i will( and I think other should too) follow up on his suggestion to write who I think should be included. Beside you, I think he could have mentioned Reuban Jackson, Jodi Braxton and Gaston Neal just to mention four in the DC area he left out. If you have the time read through the Biblio and either mail Sacha your suggestions or you can email me and I will forward them to Sacha at his magizine "Brilliant Corners" that regularly publishes jazz/poems

BTW I finally finisned my chaplet "DIS B. FOR E. KNIGHT" and released it on what would have been Etheridge Knights 75th birthday April 19th 2006. I am already get a good vibes from it and plan on expanding it into a full blown chapbook with MORE BOOTLEG HAIKUS, JAZZ/POEMS and other deidicated writing for etheridge, sonia, shirly anne williams and other poets, artist and musicians I have been inspired by

--a comment more verbose than most --excuse the length since i guess i went till i was out of breath...........

michaal l-l collins ajazzpoet@yaho.com or nota.squarepoet@yahoo.com

Christina Springer said...

I really like the original No. 2. Maybe not in this poem. I think you are right.

Maybe it's just another poem - a distant cousin poem from a beleagured, unproductive line which marries a vigorous, fertile woman...and is renewed into a lasting dynasty.

(I was never much good at workshopping.)