Triptych Talk

 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.