Words and Music

well I have to start off with e.e. cummings. I knew of him but not his poetry until I was in my thirties. a young lady sent me a card with his poem "since feeling is first" penned inside. I loved the poem more than the lass, although I liked her kisses...

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom

I love e.e. cummings too and first read his poetry when I was 16. As for jazz, my husband is a jazz drummer. Jazz is under appreciated and I don't understand why....and to think, I had no idea this was National Jazz appreciation month. I just can't keep up with designated months other than February.
 
I think I'll go put Brubeck's "Time Out" on the turntable. There's a purity to the sound of vinyl that I like, along with the pleasure I get taking the record out of the album cover and carefully placing it on the turntable. I love music.
 
 

Analog...digital. Tubes...transitors. Jazz and poetry...pop music and blogs. With each new generation there's new means of transfer of sound and data. From the printing press to the internet. The means of transfer have little to do with the quality of what's being transfered. Good music and good poetry bring one into an altered state of being. In that moment when either are experienced, you can leave your location and be wherever the music/poetry takes you. It's magic when the stars aline and you find yourself enjoying the product of genius. janej78: I agree with your fondness of vinyl. It's a shame the widest use of vinyl these days is on the 'rap' stage. But that's just my feeling on the matter.

James Davis, Jimmy White, Muddy Waters, Miles Davis, Roy Liberto, and Famous Ryan Lambert ... Poets, every one ... and Dixieland was the ink they wrote with and the stuff that coursed thru their veins ... Muddy Waters went more toward Blues, but was a Baron with Jazz, even contemporary stuff ....... One of the Greatest, that I cannot possibly omit, was Phil Harris ....... Usta love seein' him in New Orleans ... That too was back when I still had hair, and Oprah hadn't started shaving her back three times a week .......

Jazz and poetry combo is the bomb and accompanied by a perfect martini has a man laying his head on his lady's shoulder and sniffing her sweet perfume as he drifts off into a Michael Franks' world of smooth. 18 karat bad, Daddy. Kiddos don't know what they are missin'.

Congratulations,Peterman~ my ex would lick your boots. You've found a topic I don't have an opinion on!

Hiking with a book of poetry makes perfect sense.... I think of Bedouins and their incredible repertoire...  Here's a sample.  (Too bad poetry never translates well, since the meter, rhythms, word play and so on vanish into the darkness....) http://www.humanistictexts.org/bedouin.htm

I also think of the dark songs passed about by British troops in the trenches of World War I -- cynical, wise, and deeply moving.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUHh5uAcaBw

and another......... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YuZ6R8BYIg&NR=1

Everybody has one, I shouldn't wonder, and I found out about mine when Dad, in a state of high dudgeon, the front of my shirt balled up in his fist, wild eyed and unreasonable accused the wrong son... from the wrong family for all that.

Not all of you will have had to put up with that sort of crap but if you did, you will understand how in a situation like that: the madman in full rage, too close and too nuts to listen you are driven into a corner where your only defense is... a tune.

Oscar "mo fingers" Peterson's jazzy version of "Little Tin Box" from the Broadway musical "Fiorello," was mine. It is best by the way to avoid being heard to hum or whistle it under the circumstances.

That recording, owned by another, and I became separated almost fifty years ago first by miles (we moved) and then, by death (not mine) and yet it has been kept safe in my heart ever since.

I cannot find a copy and it probably matters that I knew it first from a community theater production of the musical. You know the deal: your ninth grade civics teacher, the barber, the judge four doors down all people you love, admire or to whom you are willing to extend the benefit of the doubt with respect to the thinness of their talent, who turn out to be just about as good as these guys:


http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vg84_little-tin-box_music

"Up your honor bit by bit" still makes me smile.

This just in: I FOUND IT!  Through on outside route into i-tunes. YAY!

A real barman on a real bar car once told us that anything uttered under the influence of jazz rhythms, is poetry... your infringement upon my tacitly copyrighted phrase: "Another double please," will be tolerated.

    

 
















http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vg84_little-tin-box_music

 oopsie!

Good  morning,  virtual  friends.
 
John  Cotrane's  "A  Love  Supreme"  WAS  indeed  poetry,   which  was  merely masked  on  first  impression  as  "merely"  a  creative   aproach  to  existing  jazz.    I had  to stop  what  I  was  doing,  when  first  I  heard  these  groundbreaking  combinations  of  silky smooth notes..... 

Doc  Nolan:   You  observations  remind  me  of  the  spontaneous  Christmas  truce,  between  German  and  Allied  forces,  in  France's  trenches.....    Common  values  trumped  difference  set  out  by  their  respective generals  &  politicians,   albeit  if  only for  a few  short  hours.
 
Then  I  think  of  Gallipoli,  a  jint  expedition  between  the  Australians  and  their  allies,  to  storm  the  cliffs  just  past  the  beaches  in  Turkey.   It  became  obvious  that  Turks  would  retreat  to  foxholes when  artillery  tried  to  eliminate  their  machine  gun  crews.    Then  they  would  return,  mowing  down  wave  after  wave  of  fine  young  men  in  the  prime  of  their  lives.   Officers on  the  line  ignored  the  absurdity  of  continuing  the  assault,  since  the  last  communicated  orders  from  distant  commanders  said  "take  the  bluffs,   at  all  costs."  

I'm a jazz "like-r", not a lover... I appreciate it in background, but I don't have the proper appreciation for the art.

So if you don't mind, I'll move on to poetry...

It seems like it is a dying art in this country (though not all countries, I assure you), I find something interesting in the (gulp) Facebook posts of my kids and their friends. Many quote song lyrics, inscrutable to me, but meaningful to them. It's a demonstration of the desire for beautiful words. Some write posts that are nothing short of poetry, though they don't realize it.

Poetry is art made of words.

Occasionally posts here are quite poetic. I think we tend to be lovers of the nicely turned phrase...

It is a shame that Paul Desmond rarely gets the credt for his composition Take Five.The Brubeck Quartet made it famous, but Paul wrote it not Dave.

 
A high school friend in '59 interviewed Desmond for the house organ. He answered, I think, three questions and one of them was: "How you doing, Sir?"

Didn't matter, the photos of the two of them live on.

Kristina:    Your  kids,   and  their  friends,   both  appreciate  &  quote  poetry?    I  am   sooooooo  jealous,    and  you  are  soooooo   lucky.    All  my  daughter  shares  with  me  are  crude  rap  "music"  lines........  

Some of the naturalistic poets are being overlooked like Robert Service. As far as jazz, I still listen to Chet and early Miles. Bill Evans. Red Garland. Stan Getz. Poetry and Jazz, not dissimilar at all. Mr. P makes a great point.

"Poetry and Jazz, not dissimilar at all. Mr. P makes a great point."

As proof of that sage observation, I offer experiences form the late great "Fat Tuesday's" on Third Avenue near 18th Street.

They offered a Sunday brunch which featured a discreet jazz trio: piano, bass and percussion that made everything uttered at your table sound like poetry of the highest order.

I wonder if the bottomless mimosas might have figured into that as well.

bert:  if that's true, that your daughter quotes crude rap lyrics to you, you should consider seriously giving her a good hard kick in the arse.  Then watch her while she washes her mouth out with soap.
Then take from her anything that plays crude rap music, degrading lyrics about women music, cacaphonic tunes of any genre -- take it away. 
 
She's got no business doing that.  You've got no business allowing it.  Who's the captain of your ship, anyhow?
 
Then give her a book of poetry and have her read it to you, and you back to her, while soft jazz plays.
 
She might move back to her mother's but it's the end game that counts, and she'll come back when she sees that she can't call the shots anymore with you.
 
Tis true. 
Tis very very true.

PARK4: Spoken like a Veteran  Mother ... GOOD ON YOU !!!
 
In the 60's, the Doo-Gooders were calling GOOD SENSE and Propriety, "Tough Love" ... Makes no difference what it may  be called, Good Sense it always going to be the Best Approach ... and if it can be applied with Jazz ... and a little Blues thrown in ... so be it !!!

"A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair." uttered Robert Frost, but I do think an appreciation of Jazz adds the proper notes. 
 
Poetry and jazz both play off moods...
One day might be seen reflected in a sense of happy exuberance by Cannonball Adderley's alto sax and intuitive poems by William Wordsworth.
Another day could see feelings shaped more like Herbie Hancock's protean piano playing and the unconventional creations of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The next day may be more akin to the high spirited brass attitude of Miles Davis and the free verse of Walt Whitman ~
Song of Myself
"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loaf and invite my soul,
I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass."

Robert Frost also said: "A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words." Jazz puts all that literary expression to music...and the combination of the two is sheer poetry that speaks to our souls.

jmr:  Robert Service, you are so right.  And it's always someone else who reminds me of this favorite poet of mine, I don't know why. 
So here's to Robert Service, who will never go out of style, so long as there are stories and people who want to hear them:
 
"The Cremation of Sam McGee"
 
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
    By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
    That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
    But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
    I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows -- O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared -- such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . . then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
    By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
    That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
    But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
    I cremated Sam McGee.

~~ Robert W. Service

For more on Robert Service, go here:
 
http://www.robertwservice.com

Park4:   Hello,   virtual  friend.    My  daughter  knows  better  than  to  recite  X-rated  or  explicit  stuff  around  me.    I  make  it  clear  that  "rap"  isn't  music,   it's  overgrown  children,  exhibiting  attention  seeking  behavior  to  primitive  4/4  time.   Last  night  was  a  long night,  but  my  daughter  faced  the  music,  acknowledged  the  legitimacy  of  chain  of  command,  and  gratuitously  said  "I  love  you,  daddy"  before  retiring.   Kids  seek  out  reasonable  rules.   Kids  also  often  harbor  undifferentiated  anger,  after  divorce  changes  their  world  upside  down.   The   two  of  us  will  get  through  this,  including  but  not  limited  to  treating  her  mother  with  dignity  &  respect.    She's  still  her  mom,   notwithstanding  unfortunate  differences  that  had  arisen.   I  eventually  learned  were  "yesterday's  news,"  that  is,  something  I  need  to  accept,  then  move  on.    Park4,  you  are  a  good  friend,  to  risk  rejection  by  pointedly  confronting  me  with  your  opinion.....
OK,  anybody  else  wanna  reassure  me  how  GOOD  music  can  build  an  atmosphere  between  parents  &  children???

My daughter loves Milton.  I recently overheard two high school girls at a book store anxiously searching for Homer's Illiad.  I think there are many young people searching to discover and rediscover lost arts and lost culture. 
 Not to be contrary, but I think that the blues are poetic and that jazz is more prosaic.  To me, jazz has a headline, article quality like a round metal object (a coin or a sewer lid) clanking on a hard surface and then dishing into stillness.  The blues are more lyrical, they seemingly start with a stillness, roll out like a river into the tide or over the edge like a waterfall.  If that doesn't make sense, I can blame it on the mimosas, I think I'll have another. 
 
  

Misspeaks:   The  daughter  no  longer  recites  the lyrics...see  former  post.  Awkward  sentence  correction:   I eventually  learned  to  accept  that  unfortunate  differences  were  "yesterday's  news,"  barely  relevant  to  today's  job,  "moving on."
 
Lets  get  back  to music,  ok?   I  was up  most  of  last  night...lol 

Kindlee,  your post  hooking  up  music &  literature was  outstanding....jmo

Bert -- in our house we kind of "lucked" into a music groove. When the kids were really small, we stopped watching commercial television outside of kid's programs on PBS (yeah, yeah, I know, we've missed a lot of good stuff... ). With the tv off, we started playing "our" music most of the time. We're into folk-y stuff, lite jazz, 70's singer-songwriters. This might sound really boring, but it unintentionally created a calm atmosphere that even strangers noticed.

The kids had their own music in their rooms, but they were constantly exposed to the best of what soothed my soul (love my ipod). I can refer to meaningful lyrics or whole songs, and they know what I'm talking about.

They've also been surprisingly receptive when I have sent them music by email... one song that I feel pertains to the situation. Music will speak to any soul, and if kids are given the opportunity to hear good stuff in private, they usually appreciate it.

That's my two cents on the subject. Don't know if anything will help you.

Parenting is not for wimps.

Park4 -- I memorized Sam McGee when I was in 6th grade... still love it! Spell of the Yukon is wonderful, too.

 
I cannot imagine parenting daughters in any situation where: "I hope you turn out like your mother," does not apply.

I did. They did and everything has turned out fine but it was not always fun.

boy, did I grow up deprived,or whut? I never heard of/saw Sam McGee B4....

Kristina:   I'm  jealous,   music  appreciation  right  at  home,  as  children...wow.
 
Notwithstanding  your  penchant  of  preference  {music  over  tv},   History  Channel  now  is  showing  episodes  made  for  tv,   title  something  like  "America...who  we  are."  Any  teacher  or  administrator  can  request  ONE  cd,   per  school.    Kids  are  often  clueless  about  our  history,  this  channel  rates  much  higher  in my  mind,  now  that  I  know  kids  may  just  have  a  media  friendly  "assistant"  in the  classroom.   The shows  aren't  patronizing,  or  "dumbed  down."  

Singer songwriters!  My favorite of all the genres -- if you write the lyrics and music to a song, then sing it, the chance of it being merely music to one's ears is small.  Singer-songwriters write poetry and put it to music, bluesy or otherwise, and the combination is usually brilliant.
Took me a long time to figure out that almost all my music was the product of singer-songwriters. 
I don't find it boring, Kristina -- I guess because in our house, music was always playing somewhere, and it was all kinds, depending on current interests, but emphasis always went back to singer-songwriters.
 
 
Unless it was summertime, and long days and nights on the Best Revenge, and then it went all island-y, calypso-y, and in the summer of 1988 I wore out two copies of Harry Belfonte's album "Paradise in Gazankulu" because of the song, "Skin to Skin."
 
Listen and watch here.  Best viewed with a lover. ;)
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdM1HDwn5hQ

I'm sure it is pure happenstance, but it still feels like fate to me that the tumblers got nicely aligned and clicked for me when today's very first post spoke about the only poem I ever learned (‘since feelings are first') and the only poet I've ever put forth any effort to understand and appreciate (e.e.cummings) are both mentioned. Without this combination I would have been compelled to sit silently on the sidelines and listen in awe to what all you more learned good folks has to say on the subject. 

I was just seventeen, very naïve, a tad disillusioned, and a college freshman who was a long way from home for the very first time. . . . . and I also had a crush on my just recently graduated English Lit. teacher who really enjoyed talking about e.e.cummings and this poem in particular.

That was back in 1966 and the only thing I remember about Miss Orr now was that she was short, wore white stockings and had a ‘Buster Brown' kind of hairstyle.

I do remember how much I enjoyed that particular poem ‘cos it was perfectly suited for dreamers who don't take themselves too seriously; and it was written by a man who was not afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve and demonstrated that he too did not take himself nor his work too seriously by his avoidance of capital letters in his work and his signature.

I've always admired people who have such a confident perspective of themselves. I still do.

As for any artistic expression of what is on someone's mind or secreted in their heart and soul....... be it poetry, jazz, or any other true expression..... I may not understand it or appreciate it as I should; but I do believe it is all somehow very good.

Peace out....

Stoney:    Sometimes  otherwise  smary  &  savvy  adults  have  midlife  crises.    I  was  typical,  I  bought  a  sports  car.   Others  sort  of  melt  down,    reinventing  themselves  into  someone  you  no  longer  recognize,   someone  who  makes  bad  choices,   one  little  increment  at  a  time.   This  "thing"  usually  takes  care  of  itself,   with  time.    The  other  parent  has  to  decide  at  what  point  the  kid's  future  is  being  diminished....
 
Peter  Lake:   If  anyone  starts  reciting  "Trees"  by  Joyce  Kilmer,   I  swear  I'm  just  going  to  have  to  SCREAM.....lol

Poetry and Jazz are not lacking in either imagination or inner spirit. I found that both of those traits tended to be squelched in grades K - 12. Interpretation was often boiled down to the one and only set of bare bones meanings the teacher would allow. Everything was yes or no, right or wrong; on any exam, in any subject, shades of gray were strictly prohibited. For me, true appreciation for those art forms (and of many other things) came after high school graduation.

Our 2 granddaughters tell that in listening to music that their mom makes them take time to listen to some real old  music (jazz) but not to let their mom know that they told.     
One great thing about living where we do is top down driving thru our wine country on back roads with some good jazz on while visiting wineries.Wine and jazz go together quite well.
 
Drinks that include olives are also a very good friend of jazz. Very cold and very dry, the drinks , not the music.

bert, my virtual friend, it's not your day, I'm afraid.  Or maybe it is, but we disagree again.

 
You bring up PBS' new show "America:  Who We Are" -- and I wonder:  did you notice that there was but one woman allowed to be a talking head in their opener?  All the rest were men, including Michael Douglas, who to my recollection has no reason to be there, telling us what he thinks, no credentials, but perhaps he has a good deal of time on his hands, so maybe that's why his head was allowed to talk for much too long.
 
Linda Holmes, from NPR, the "Monkey See" column, shares my viewpoint and explains it far better than I.  She wrote that the show should have been called "America: Who (Some Of Us) Are."
 
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2010/04/the_history_channel_presents_a.html
 
PBS seems to have forgotten the oh-so-true adage that: "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world."

    
THIS:

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm... (22) by E. E. Cummings
when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage-
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age

when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
-and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close

when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn-valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude-and march
denounces april as a saboteur

then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind(and not until)

HAS NEVER MEANT THE SAME THING TO ME TWICE

but it sounds good with Oscar Peterson a nice sangle milt

...then that's a terrific poem, stoney.  One that has never meant the same thing to you, twice.
I like it, a lot, never heard it before.  I wish I had one of those:  a poem that, when I reread it, it means something different every time.  I don't think I do, but it's a good thing to have, I think.
 
I enjoy ee cummings' poetry.  There is a poem of his that I haven't read in just about forever, that was subject of much discussion, its meaning.  One group saw one thing and was adamnant about what it saw, another (mine) waffled, when back and forth, and to this day, I'm not sure what he's talking about, an old lover, a lover who is old, or a new love for a young lover, or maybe, a child.
 
But equally probably not.  Cummings probably never went to bed until he was satisfied that his words could be read upside down and backwards and still make some kind of sense to someone -- and that each word was the best of the days windfall: the ripest cherry, a peach bursting.
 
Here's the poem that engendered that discussion, many years ago:
 
 
"somewhere I have never travelled"

 
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-- e e cummings

"...nobody, not even the rain,"

I don't know how, but I will figure a way to steal that if it kills me.

Speaking of which, a heads up on very hot Manhattan weather has us rethinking and repacking.

It is hoped that this time the Big Apple loves me back.

I do too.
 
Both hope you find a way to steal the line, and hope Manhattan loves you back this time.  No more drama. 
 
We need no more drama.
 
Keep repeating that, over and over...

PARK4 and Stoney - I've saved a seat on thesepia by the window for another of us who holds e.e. in high regard, although not as much as she loves horses, to join us for a quiet, relaxing, dream filled ride that will be illuminated only by an almost full moon and the only sound to be heard is the muffled chuffing of the mighty engines and the distant howls of the coyotes. I hope this agreeable to all. 
A toothsome dinner guaranteed to delight the senses shall be served and the drinks are on the train as always. I'm sure TCM will have something to fit the mood on its schedule tonight.
 be there or be square,,,,,,,

PARK4:  Robert Service is my Favorite Poet, for All Time ... GOOD ON YOU !!!

Odd Poetry Moment of the Day:

Had just walked into the school building where my office hides, with a gas station mocha in one hand and a bite of breakfast in the other (no time before I walked to work). Here comes our one and only poetry instructor and her hippie son down the stairs. Without any word of warning, they stop in front of me and she (the instructor) reads a poem to me. Then, when done, the two of them walk away.

And now, some spoken word

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krV0e-qJ1uI

 
Mr. Peter Lake,

Well, I don't know... the last night spent aboard thsepia found me duct taped to my reclining seat while someone delivered a foot massage employing very abundant bare breasts.

I have never felt more dirty, defiled, used or abused in my entire life and ... I'll try to be there around midnight.

OK, I admit it, I love (some ) jazz and (some) poetry, and have been known to recite poetry to the dog when alone with her in the car - she also enjoyed a good "sing", so we'd put some muscic on & sing along. I think her voice was better than mine.
The Anglo-Wesh poet, RS Thomas spent his last years living in my village & we would go blackberry picking together. He was very surprised that I could quote his work to him- he was getting old & I remembered it better tha he! Engaved on my heart are the silly poems my Dad used to recite when we were children- The Jabberwokky, The Owl & The Pussycat, The Dong with a Luminous nose etc. Best of all, Dad's "ditties"- such as:
 
The wise old owl sat in an oak
The more he heard, the less he spoke.
The less he spoke, the more he heard.
Now, wasn't he a wise old bird?
 
or:-
 
The rain, it raineth every day,
On just & unjust fellow.
But even more so on the just, bacause...
The unjust steals the just's umbrello!
 
Equally, getting back to jazz, in the days when we had parties that, if we had neighbours, the police would have been called... last music was an old 78 recording of The Onion Song.

What lovely poems - all!
One of my all time favorite phrases is "open to interpretation." It's one of the things that keeps poetry and Jazz alive; never to grow old.
 
This is my favorite ee cummings poem (which I carry with me everywhere, along with a photo of my husband)...
 
i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
 
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
 
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS3QOtbW4m0

and

The Last Poets  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O7MWLdOU7c&feature=related

Both the fusion of jazz and poetry, infact they have been termed "jazzoetry," and ***interestingly*** the fathers of rap music.

Speaking of forcing kids to listen to music they think they'll hate- I dragged my (then  7 year old son) to a classical music, concert, a visiting Philharmonic Orchestra-(a rare treat in this neck of the woods) He came out of that experiece saying "I want to learn how to play a violin!!!" - and he did. He became a member of the School "Roarchestra"- never was a word so aptly mispronounced- God, the concerts I had to enure as a dutiful Mom! Bless. He can still scrape a good tune out of a fiddle. The Welsh saying for "Let's call it a night" is "Fiddl yn y to", which means fiddle put away safe in the roof beams of the ceiling, but to hand for tomorrow. It's turned 11PM here & my duvet is calling me.
 
Can't go without saying something about poetry written in the Welsh lanuage- it has complex rules & is a joy to listen to, even if you don't understand the words... poetry remains so revered in Wales that there is an annual event, The National Eisteddfod. It is Wales's main cultural event, centering on a poetry comptition. The winner is enthroned & crowned. Back to yesterday- the ceremonies involve the Welsh equilvalent of Vestal Virgins, & all manner of Druids, Bards, artists, craftsmen etc.- and a LOT of beer!

KINDLEE-- swoon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is so beautiful. I will be copying it down later. (& yes I have NOT forgotten the meatballs. I'm a meatball...) Just utterly beautiful....
 
PARK & STONEY-- I also enjoyed your beautful Cummings poems. I must have let him slip thru my fingers somehow. Also- the Robert Service poem, what an epic!!!
 
When I was in college I had a late night jazz program & I played all the old school, late night jazz: Stan Getz, the utterly stunning John Coltrane, and I love Nancy Wilson, some Nina Simone. The owner of the big lumber mill would call when I had an afternoon shift & tell me, "Me & the guys are really enjoying the tunes, keep em' coming." He had also gone to the same small liberal arts college & was a frat brother w/ my uncle. Small world.
 
I slow danced w/ his lovely son once - who was a good friend of my cousin. And so it goes and so it goes.
 
And for some reason today these memories make me feel loss & the melancholy of memories. Which I guess feels just & right for this early evening..... 

Oh, PeterLake, you know I will be there, thesepia train's whistle is like a siren's song for some of us...let's see if it can rouse and soothe some quiet souls tonight. 
It will be a good night, and the horses will fly alongside the train, and all will be right with the world.
 
We'll "feed her tea and oranges that come all the way from China...and just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her, she gets you on her wavelength and lets the River answer that you've always...been her lover..."  

Stoney - we all know you duct taped yourself to that chair.

It's the stand up bass that controls your heartbeat and the gas pedal. My head always bobbed uncontrollably as I would cruise down the road in Melanie's old yellow Triumph Spitfire tuned to 89.5 fm the local jazz station and either the scratchy vinyl I imagined or the bad reception made the night ride my own unique session with the great ones. Shifting gears is something I miss today, something musical in that rhythm as well. 

PARK--- Now you've done it- you had to put those words down & I cannot contain anything now. I can so clearly see our old living room where my mother would put that  record on & we would sing to it. Hopefully I won't drive into a tree after I finish my evening tea & take the dogs to the lake; trying to see through tear stained eyes.
 
Yes, a quiet night of drinks, music, good people, stars in the sky, everyone in their little nook, the lights turned down low & PL guiding us on our journey.....

DAMNSELFLY--- so good to see you, I missed your post somehow. I've missed you!

Ho,lap top & cat in bed with me- PARK that little quote was a blast from the past. Getting older now, the line "It's just the way it changes like the shoreline and the sea" is the one that resonates with me.
Tommy Typical I still have a manual gearshift car, I hate automatics. No fun at all.
 
Look foreward to reading how todays page turned out. Goodnight all.

I think I was too young and impressionable when I first saw "Dead Poets Society".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSAymj4hp7Y

Michael:  I like that a lot.  Shows to go you:  there are no dead poets.  And no Society, either.  It was all just a movie, like you thought.
 
This is kind of eerie.  Lovely, really nice, but I never heard it read by he who writ it. 
 
Got any more?
 
he's got a great voice for reading.

e.e.cummings for me too:  "he drew a circle that shut me out heretic, rebel, a thing to flout but love and I had the wit to win; we drew a circle that took him in."--- and yes, Kristina also a "like-r" not a lover of jazz -- though I can get caught up in those drummers......just something about them.

had a great voice.
 
 
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZG9kP9kAiY
 
 
Following Michael's example, here's Robert Service reciting "The Cremation of Sam McGee" -
whew!  he sounds like Boris Karloff.
 
I'm not sleeping tonight.  I'm keeping one eye open.  You will too, when you listen to this recital.

bebe: good to be back...it is really annoying when real life demands my attention away from my virtual life.

Poetry and regrets......  I regret not memorizing dozens and dozens of poems when I was young (when my mind was able to easily store long works).... I regret not writing more poems.... I regret losing my only copy of the best poem I ever wrote: 'Sandia Crest'.....  I regret never finding a group of folks who could recite favorite poems to each other (preferably around a campfire under a starry, moonlite sky in a pine forest).....  RESOLUTON: Carry a large supply of poems to read to myself in the Rockies this summer on my 'trek'.   I can't fix the past, but I can engineer the future! 

It irritates me that I memorized two Garcia Lorca poems when I was in college and now can only repeat fragments from memory....  My situation?  My mind is like a broken pot.  A bit of water is pooled in the curved remains, but most of it has run into the dry desert soil.  The pot remains -- in shards.  At least I have shards and memories of what the pot once contained.  With time, even the broken pieces will vanish.

There are those that will argue that rap, reflecting today's culture is also today's poetry -- I find it appalling, but then who knows what future generations will say about it.

An old friend (where are you, Antonio Bou Moreno?) once told me (very wisely) that poems should be spoken -- not read -- and NEVER be studied as if they were cadavers in a morgue.  Here's a link to a great poem (in Spanish)... It should be read out loud........ http://www.poesia-inter.net/index210.htm

A little bragging if I may - our 11 year old granddaughter won second place in the county and state for her poem about the ocean.  Very proud of her and she, so matter of fact; quite a kid.

Stoney - thanks for the Oscar Peterson suggestion.  Downloading as we speak....
 
Here's an eecummings I've always liked.  Hope y'all do, too

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Andy,
That's huge.

Shandonista,

Thanks for the gem.

Bert,

You gotta be the second most honest guy ever.

PL

Stoney doan wanna talk 'bout no stinkin' duck tape.


This is beyond serendipity and into weirdness of cosmic dimensions: out the door and nearly gone, the phone rang.

It was Doug a guy with whom I had, as a boy, committed an act of vigilanteism so perfect in its purpose and execution that people queued up around the corner dying to take credit for it.

I had read that he was living in Dorset, UK.

We had not spoken in over fifty years and he sensing that I seemed in a hurry, reported that he was at his late mother's place on Long Island , feeling a little North American and hoping to visit.

And I doing a flat Jack Benny take at my own reflection, said: "I'll buy breakfast either weekend day at the Gramercy Cafe on 17th and 3rd Ave."

And he, not to be outdone, said; "You get breakfast and I'll get dinner at The Gramercy Tavern."

That is the better end of the stick by about an order of magnitude... maybe two.

Paolo, yeah Paul Desmond wrote "Take Five" while a member of The Dave Brubeck Quartet. So, to honor his fine writing, I'm listening to "Summertime" which was his first post Brubeck album.
 
Kindlee, your riff on poetry and jazz was so very well put.
 
Langston Hughes, a Harlem Renaissance poet incorporated syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases of blues and jazz in his poems. later, with the Beat generation, jazz poetry shifted from racial pride and individuality to more spontaneity and freedom of expression against the status quo....and isn't the status quo what youth rebel against?
 
Gil Scott Heron, was the forerunner (father?) of modern rap and hip-hop.I liked his poetry recited to jazz. Rap speaks to the younger generation and reflects what's going on in the lives of a large portion of the population. Some rap rises above the gansta and mysoginistic mentality and is political in nature. Doesn't every generation find the new generation's music awful? swing, boogie woogie, bebop, rock and roll, heavy metal, punk, rap....
 
To me, all music is an expression of someone's feelings. I listen to everything...classical, a little bit of Patsy Cline or Ernest Tubbs, some folk, some rock.  I love The Beastie Boys and The Wu Tang Clan, though my main diet consists of blues, soul, jazz and Latin jazz.
 
Not having any poetry in me, music is an expression of how I feel...so I may start the day with The Talking Heads or The Clash, then James Brown, Al Green, Curtis Mayfield or Bettye Lavette, then Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman to Poncho Sanchez to Chucho Valdez....or really mix it up. The choices are endless. So much music, so little time. Anyway, I love music and it's a part of my daily life.

JANE--- welcome!
 
I really can't stand rap, BUT-- when you mentioned the Wu Tang Clan I got excited. Their soundtrack to the movie, "Ghostdog", is absolutely stunning. Really mesmerizing & I can't explain my attraction to it. It is the only rap I own, but it is so much more.

 Bebe, thanks for the welcome.... Your unexplained attraction to the Wu Tang Clan is exactly why I try to keep an open ear. I've been surprised more than once to hear some outstanding music when least expected.
 
When I was young, I was strictly into blues and soul...how limiting....so I've benefitted so much from broadening my reception to other sounds. I'm listening to Fela Kuti at the moment.