Woke up again with the jeweler's eye, it's amazing, I look at my poems and can spot flaws as easy as a puddle of cat piss in the middle of the kitchen floor. However, I'm just about out of old furniture to refurbish. Anyway I wrote the original draft for this in under 10 minutes on a dare from Terrance Hayes, but would up actually writing something almost decent. Even though I was try to prove a point about how easy it is to write certain kinds of euphonic nondiscursive poems. So I cleaned it up and gave it more of a through-line. It's still got a fairly high level of difficulty, reading-wise, but I think will reward a careful reader who is willing to delve a little deeper than just the surface. But who knows, I could just be on crack. Anyway, this is the first (and so far only) poem in my series on Pittsburgh Jazz musicians.
EMBOUCHURE
For Roy Eldridge
A king in French, if not in France,
before the Penguin’s nest razed your realm
who ruled the Hill District's haunts?
Lacquer-lipped, monarchic,
you embraced hot brass, allowed no mill
to steal your wind. Hawkish notes,
Dizzying in their height,
dove through the ear's atmosphere.
Almost aortic how a little Jazz
flowed from the four-chambered nautilus
swinging hemo around the globe.
Still, your role royale was low-down,
gritty as homemade gravy, your lips
buzzing the brass ring in truly cerulean style.
3 comments:
1. ‘Embouchure’- refers to the specific way the tongue, lips, jaw, and muscles of the mouth fit around a musical instrument. For example, when I got my front tooth knocked out, it really messed up my embouchure. The phrase ‘embraced hot brass’ was meant to play on both the idea and the sound of the word, not sure how successful it is. In French ‘embouchure’ literally means ‘flow into’.
2. The name Roy is derived from ‘Roi’ which of course means ‘King’ in French. Thus, ‘monarchic’ and ‘royal’
3. In the 50s and 60s many of Pittsburgh’s Jazz clubs were located in the Hill District, part of which was demolished to make way for the Mellon (nee Civic) Arena, where the Penguin’s (Hockey) still play.
4. I tried to work in the names of the major sport’s teams in PGH. Thus Penguin’s, ‘steal your’ (Steelers), the Pirates reference was lost in a revision. I also got in maul (Mauler’s, the USFL team)
5. Tried to work in references to Coleman Hawkins (Hawkish) and Dizzy Gillespie (Dizzying) since Roy played with both of them and his high notes and quick valve work had a strong influence on Dizz.
6. Eldridge’s nickname was ‘Little Jazz’
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