WEBVTT

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This last poem I'm
going to read is, again,

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like I said, a long poem.

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It's about John Coltrane.

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And it's about that moment
in John Coltrane's career

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where he's about to
experiment-- starts

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experimenting with his sound,
takes a bit of a chance.

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Now the thing about Coltrane
at this point is that--

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I always tell
people, if he never

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had played another
note after he played

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with Miles Davis's
Quintet, his reputation

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would have been solid.

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He'd still be influencing
Branford Marsalis.

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And all if he had never
played any else beyond Miles.

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But he went on.

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He played with Thelonious Monk.

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And then started his own
quintet, and then quartets,

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and quintets, and list
goes on, and on, and on,

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and gets really,
really out there.

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I mean, he's starting
to do something that--

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trying to pull out
some kind of spiritual

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or reaching for some
kind of spiritual,

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and in some way social,
truth or declaration.

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And that's what this poem
is trying to deal with,

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declaration of voice.

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It's called "The
Sheets of Sound."

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"One.

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He says what do I have to lose
actually by coming right out

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and saying what I
mean to say like this,

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and like this, and like this?

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Breathing rickety steps to
the heart of the matter.

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Loose a black spirit
around the joint.

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Mr Coltrane floating a line
like this, pushing its muscle.

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Hell, discovering
its sweet worth.

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The sweet worth of
pushing any damn wall.

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This is a necessary lesson.

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You can make an art out of
sailing right over the top.

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Spin a hard clean, if only
for these brief seconds.

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Close the world, its silly
wounds and hard manners

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with a yell.

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I hear you push it, a
quote, a necessary lesson.

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There are gifts, aren't there?

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You ask.

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What do I have to lose if I
come right out and test it?

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Peel back the romance and a
breath as you reach for what?

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Surely, this love,
I hear you sing.

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This sort of love will ruin me.

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A wonder operates here, pushes
away the dam wall as you leap.

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Dresses the shadows in
the corners of the room.

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Speaks for you, breezes
up your throat opens.

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How many times can you do this?

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Push your losses open,
map the blues currents.

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I hear what if color the air
with the danger of asking?

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Two.

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A man who gives himself
a right to speak.

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A fine spray of what he
knows of where he's been.

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What has happened to him?

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An ax which cuts
impatient allowed

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humility, a spiritual science.

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Hear it?

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In the skirt of the fine
African-American mother.

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Hear it?

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In the squeezed life of
the Black civil servant.

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Ask the harlequin or the
man with the jackal's face.

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Ask a schoolgirl
sharpening a mental knife.

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Or the king of the margins
with the strength of nations

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etched by minimum wages.

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Or little Johnny Volcano spacing
in and out of whatever world

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will have him.

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Or a long, tall, cool who sparks
up only after he folds away

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his chauffeur uniform.

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The dark scholar
obscured by his teeth

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diminished each time he laughs.

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A fine spray of what
goes on, who gets

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swallowed, who
takes it, who jumps.

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A concentration of who
gives in, who shakes it off.

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A fine spray of
water might sound

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like if they could
open their lives,

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if they could blow it out.

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Three.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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I hear proof, claim,
swing, associate itself.

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I hear proof declare the
outer layers slough off.

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I hear proofs beat.

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Its wide fingers roll
seconds on its tips.

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I hear proofs laugh, a deep
glide from the stomach's pit.

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This is who I am and
this is who I am.

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And this is who I am.

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I hear proof's river, the deep
bass spring which feeds it.

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The trance of keyboard
light upon water.

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I hear proof's memory, a torch
of calfskin lighting a cave.

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This is who I am.

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And this is who I am.

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And this is who I am.

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I hear proof gather the sweet
sour berries of its name.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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I hear proof,
survival take a verse.

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Four.

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I try to imagine the first
attempt on the bandstand,

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try to figure out how that
first breath grew wild, troubled

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the curve with the mouthpiece.

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Chance's sweet flavors as he
leaned toward the microphone.

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What would you do if a
man fell to the ground

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and in that moment
decided that this act was

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sung, decided as he fell?

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Not to mind the falling,
to name it something else.

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Think of it, both of you
locked in that first grand

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inarticulate slur.

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What to say to a man who was
shredding decorum, blowing it

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across the club and streamers?

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Imagine the spectacle
as it shakes down

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the slant of those first notes.

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The announcement as it
bumbles against a cocked ear.

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Five.

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I heard a story once told on
Miles Davis and the young pup

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John Coltrane, who
was seeking out

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the master's wisdom sort
of sitting at his feet

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so to speak.

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And he asked Mr. Davis to
reveal to him the secret

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of how to finish a solo.

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And Miles sort of grunts
like a Baptist mother.

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And he tells Coltrane, take the
damn horn out of your mouth.

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Six.

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He has discovered
the only way to pose

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the question, the only language
that might fit the equation.

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This will be his.

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This yearning to tell all.

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The bomb against a
soul's distraction.

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He knows this can be the
only canvas supple enough

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to take it.

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After years of exploring
the cafe standards

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at the gigs and the
studios, beautifying

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each and every possible nuance.

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This is his only way out to
decode what nags at his breath.

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To have his tongue on the
name of what it chases.

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Seven.

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I am driving with a
friend in New Jersey.

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Two poets discussing
jazz in a moving vehicle

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when the conversation somehow
floats over to Coltrane.

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And for the first time,
our talk develops holds.

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The long and the short of
it, you confuse him, John.

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Come on, is the world
really like that at the core

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all the time?

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The fee for the search so high?

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He's referring, of course,
to those moments when

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the only thing between
you and dissolving.

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The only thing that
can win you back

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is McCoy hemming you in
a loose blouse of notes.

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What about this?

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My friend wants to know.

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What do you call it, jazz?

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It's the spin he puts on the
word that sinks everything.

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Eight.

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A Love Supreme, but
how long can anyone

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listen to bullets
hitting sanctified tin?

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You can believe what it must
cost him, these thin sheets

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of hard translation.

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A black tongue is
a coiled danger,

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is trouble, squared trouble.

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A black tongue is a
trick mirror, lightening,

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and the fuse.

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And this beauty is a danger, as
a sound called when the water

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breaks called what
if after murder,

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after terror, after servitude
after disappearance,

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after displacement,
after short change,

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after guff, the child's
portion, the revised story.

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The wake up call
got through anyway.

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Nine.

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I tuned my ears to my name.

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I dream what I carry.

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I taste what can't be swallowed.

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I shake to what I cry.

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I come from a long line.

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My mother canned the fruit.

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My sister used her beauty.

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My niece inherited
my impatience.

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My brother never found his mind.

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How do I sing them?

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We are not sweet.

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These are lives one walks
around yet locked in the throat.

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The angels of our gods,
claimed and unclaimed choirs.

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How to admit their song?

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Against the world,
against the facts,

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the acquired urge to gaze down.

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Ten.

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Once I listen to you
recreate the world.

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It was one of your later gigs.

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You made a few statements.

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I heard it only once years ago.

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And I still remember
the way the horns

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blew primeval slop,
which cricketed

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into gills, wings, fur.

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Roared into a new
language, declared itself,

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reared on its cool black limbs.

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You were close to being spent.

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I heard it only once.

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An outrage stretched over two
sides of a four sided record.

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I remember the way the
cymbals spat the weather out,

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seas percussed against
the piano's terra firma.

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I have carried this for years.

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How we tumble with it.

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How we can never
get it all out."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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