Poem as tripartite meditation, as ode, elegy, and petition, as three part harmony, as a chord containing chords—poem as fractal.
AN IDEA OF IMPROVISATION WITH “SUBTERRANEAN NIGHT-COLORED MAGI”
theme & variations on a phrase from Amiri Baraka
“Subterranean” implies
miles deep in a mine shaft
of being—cored by minor intervals
or subtext rich in King Oliver's ore
now bourn from the motherlode
as a stream of indigo undersongs
or seismic solos graphed
on a tectonic trumpet
rising up Richter’s scale
til You're Under Arrest
for spelunking funky rhythms
or scaling Seven Steps to Heaven
to paint Sketches of Spain
all up under the canvas
til it bleeds All Blues
out the other side
I hear the son of a dentist
doing rootwork with a hoodoo horn
hollering Bebop toasts
was you Petey Wheatstraw
Satchmo’s son-in-law?
maybe a signifyin junkie
with a monkey on his back
perhaps Shine below the Titanic’s deck
shoveling until
you might early like Bird
or knight like Trane
were blue as a Bird
or freighted as a Train
could wing like Bird
or rail like a Trane
rumbling underground.
“Night-colored” implies sable
as miles of tamped tarmac or
a nocturne rising on raven wings
jet in the sky Round Midnight
or a cast iron kettle with a Bitch’s Brew
simmering past the repast
so black, it's Kind of Blue
maybe not slick as black ice
or cool as black snow
but sweet as black cherries
on the Downbeat
like a blackjack
black jackhammer
black Jack Johnson
black Jack
of all trumpeting trades
uncoiling past inkblack
oilblack and cinderblack
or kohl black
to Vantablack —
a bootblack stomping
the bottom of the hole black
as a tube that cuts off
blood to one arm
or a black ring darkening
a woman’s eye
like a keloid fraught with
what you fought with
—unreadable prints of darkness
your black turned to the audience
bleeding maybe too coolly
into colors of night.
“Magi” implies muted druid
Traveling blue Miles
to follow charted stars
Miles in the Sky
O Dark Magus, keep us minders
of the metronome On The Corner
O soloing Sorcerer with E.S.P.
O high priest of improvisation
testifying in a funky Tutu
with 5,280 feet
climbing 1.6 klicks
in search of Amandla
or Sankofa, both Live and Evil
blowing East St. Louie's Blues
but In a Silent Way
Blue in Green with Bill
to cast a net of knotted cords
around Bag's Groove
O Magi say So What and throw
Milestones through the stained-glass
windows of jazz
O Man with a Horn—have mercy!
rehearse more verses of your Sufi Blues
O free Orisha run the Voodoo down
minister at the marriage
of Tariqa & Hal
and divine our square roots
from modal scales or ghostly notes
or steep in your still running waters
wholly dark and deep
with miles to go before we sleep
with miles to go before we sleep
Triptych Talk
In Joel Dias-Porter’s “An Idea of Improvisation with ‘Subterranean Night-Colored Magi,’” we encounter a masterful demonstration of what the poet calls his “POE theory” of poetry—the notion that Prayer, Ode, and Elegy constitute the three primary lenses through which all poetry should be viewed. This theoretical framework finds embodiment in a poem that functions simultaneously as jazz tribute, mystical text, and formal experiment, with each of its three movements exemplifying one of these fundamental modes while creating an intricate fractal architecture.
The poem’s tripartite structure mirrors its theoretical foundation. The “Subterranean” section operates as pure ode, celebrating Miles Davis through the characteristic accumulation and catalog of praise. Here we find the exuberant energy essential to the odic form: rapid-fire album titles (“You’re Under Arrest,” “Seven Steps to Heaven,” “Sketches of Spain”) building into a crescendo of mythological positioning. The folkloric references—Petey Wheatstraw, Shine, the signifying monkey—place Miles within a pantheon of African-American legendary figures, while playful wordwork (“might early like Bird / or knight like Trane”) demonstrates that joy in language that marks the ode’s celebratory impulse. This section pulses with life-affirming energy, treating musical improvisation as a kind of heroic exploration worthy of epic praise.
The middle section, “Night-colored,” shifts into elegiac territory with remarkable tonal sophistication. Where the ode celebrated, the elegy mourns and acknowledges loss. The imagery darkens considerably—we encounter violence (“a black ring darkening / a woman’s eye”), physical trauma (“a tube that cuts off / blood to one arm”), and the weight of historical suffering. The progression through increasingly profound shades of black—from “inkblack / oilblack and cinderblack” to the absolute absorption of “Vantablack”—traces a descent into the kind of darkness that elegy must confront. The “unreadable prints of darkness” aka “Prince of Darkness” becomes a metaphor for trauma’s resistance to interpretation, while the image of turning “your black turned to the audience / bleeding maybe too coolly” captures both performance’s vulnerability and the way art transforms suffering into aesthetic experience.
The final “Magi” section proceeds into genuine prayer, employing the formal structures of liturgical invocation. The repeated “O” apostrophes (“O Dark Magus,” “O soloing Sorcerer,” “O high priest”) follow classical prayer syntax, while imperative constructions (“keep us minders,” “have mercy,” “rehearse more verses”) directly petition Miles as spiritual intercessor. The section’s climactic moment—“minister at the marriage / of Tariqa & Hal”—reveals the poet’s sophisticated understanding of Arabic mystical terminology, asking Miles to officiate the union between spiritual path and ecstatic state. The closing mantra (“with miles to go before we sleep” repeated) functions as both supplication and benediction, transforming Frost’s Protestant pilgrimage into Islamic dhikr.
This progression from celebration through lamentation to supplication follows the archetypal pattern of spiritual literature, creating what amounts to a jazz psalm that moves through the full emotional and spiritual spectrum while maintaining improvisational freedom. The POE theory proves its utility here by illuminating how these three modes aren’t merely organizational principles but represent fundamental human responses to existence—the need to praise, to mourn, and to petition the divine.
Yet the poem’s fractal nature extends far beyond this tripartite macro-structure. Each stanza contains its own internal clustering of threes, creating what the poet calls “images grouped in threes like chords.” In “Subterranean,” we find geological imagery (mine shaft, motherlode, ore), musical intervals (minor intervals, Richter’s scale, tectonic trumpet), and folkloric references (Petey Wheatstraw, Shine, Signifying monkey) operating simultaneously. The “Night-colored” section moves through color gradations, violence imagery, and performance metaphors, while “Magi” weaves together spiritual epithets, geographical measurements, and alchemical transformations.
This fractal architecture means that the poem contains itself at every level—each micro-section mirrors the macro-structure’s movement through praise, lament, and petition. The triadic clustering creates harmonic resonances that echo jazz’s own three-note chord structures, making the poem’s form embody its musical content. Like a jazz composition that develops themes through variation while maintaining underlying harmonic relationships, the poem maintains its essential three-part structure while allowing each element to develop according to its own internal logic.
The theoretical implications prove as significant as the artistic achievement. The POE theory suggests that all poetry engages with these three fundamental human activities—celebrating what we love, mourning what we’ve lost, and petitioning what we cannot control. Rather than limiting poetic possibility, this triadic framework expands it by providing a comprehensive emotional and spiritual range within which infinite variation becomes possible.
In “An Idea of Improvisation with Subterranean Night-Colored Magi” we see how formal constraint can generate rather than limit meaning. The bespoke form proves surprisingly flexible, allowing each meditation to develop its own character while contributing to the larger architectural vision. The poem succeeds as both homage to Amiri Baraka’s phrase and Miles Davis’s artistry, and as an original exploration of how poetry might embody the improvisational principles it celebrates. Through its fractal structure and theoretical sophistication, it argues that the most innovative art often emerges from the deepest engagement with structured forms—a truth that Miles Davis himself proved throughout his revolutionary career.
