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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300128550 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2008 |
| Series: | Yale Series of Younger Poets |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 3 MB |
Read an Excerpt
Discography
By SEAN SINGER
Yale University Press
Copyright © 2002 Yale UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-09363-6
Chapter One
The Old Recordrolled out of the hot machine the Scully Automated Lathe, covered in oil, rigged to the metal ends, dying of spin, metal on black, back to back thimble weights, diamond and rinsed to a new shine, lunge and pull into circles, 100 grooves to the centimeter, calling it vinyl, midnight candle,
drops onto the place with the push of the nidifugous chirping needle, a bell crank leadplant, resting in a red scissor over the lumps of steel, then rising with throstle smoke, jazz dust, rumbly with the Blues, the old rumormonger taking us to the juke, (the Bambara word that is wicked !)
bouncing resin polymer lost to the racy sough of "Baby she got a phonograph, and it won't say a lonesome word Baby she got a phonograph and it won't say a lonesome word What evil have I done what evil has the poor girl heard?"
Photo of John Coltrane, 1963
Otherworldly and outreaching, A Parnassus of noise with a serious Glint of inestimable Worry on his face,
O Coltrane what will ring From your pious Gleaming Antillean Euphonia, so capable, Swift, with no trace,
No trace of stillness? The blur Of the gray-gray and gris-gris Flows hornward to the black bell
Of the saxophone, a cylinder Of joy, an empurpled sea Of heaven ebbing into hell.
Ellingtonia
for Edward Kennedy Ellington
1 ... And the lamp caught fire after he put a blue cashmere sweater over it. Subtle as a Nance obbligato on filmy violin-two brown curves en passant, purflings ease sound out of the stank of violin parts: belly, waist, chin rest, rib, sound hole, pegbox, tailpiece, rounded shoulder. Ellington was an expert on them all.
2 libretto
holy writ: Billy Strayhorn would wake up, compose for four hrs. Would wake Duke
: Blood Count or Ballad for Very Tired and Very Sad Lotus Eaters for example, & he'd bring his golden torso up, & finish off the rest of the composition.
In the morning, after composing all night, Duke would open the closet
[Full of blue cashmere sweaters] & His Orchestra was playing the next morning: Plucky, plugugly, pozzolana, porous, & perfect blues.
3
Daffdowndilly Ebullience Daibutsu Ear Damselfish Ectogenesis Dardanelles Edge Darksome Eiderdown Demonax Ellipse Desirous Empire Doughbelly Eohippus Dovetail Espalier
4
Salieri eavesdropped Mozart playing a word-sex game; just then the creamy, squeezing oboe exalted-unbolted Chimaphila umbelata plumbed beautiful music the color of blonde night: red plum jam on pumpernickel: a Puerto Rican hermaphrodite putting on pink lipgloss.
5 Wednesday night, Ellington, who could forefeel the slightest discolored saxifrage leaf easing between two rocks, heard through a catnap & a halfdozen chewed pencil tips, the babygreen, sweetpea Billy exhale.
6
Blue, through blue dukedoms passed on to accept That place which comes to each of us alone.
Silver Gelatin
Bellocq photographed me yesterday. Nothing is left out, not even the smell. I go naked to pick up the Raleigh Rye. He has a staccato voice like an angry squirrel, a big waterhead, and is only five feet tall. I look at the flashbulb like it wants me. I draw a butterfly on the wall and think there's a myth about what unfolds from the pupa: Southern Jezebel, Painted Lady, Sara Orangetip. Those could be any girl in Storyville. Tonight our street is a wet, velvet shade, the girls smoke cigars, and I have no money. My form rises from the bath in the reddish light.
Scintillatingly Armstrong
No trumpet after lights out. The nuns say quit playing And wriggle marine into your dream like a lioness Touching her wounded feelings. Behold the brand
Of scarlet on the brow of her Promised Land and not Feel the pink one in his own damned cheek. Trumpet Goes back in its cardboard. Whites & yolks. Sensitive
Morning. Peachskin calico. He dreamed greatly, weedhearted Winged genius, framed by love. Our music Is a secret order. His shaft of lighting was brass, valves
Bleating. No wonder Lil took to veils and she descended From that he-goat, that horizontal pupil, the blues Chewing fat, chewing. Nightclothed scoundrel. The blues
Is a goat in a sea of red clover. Lil loved him onetime. Such heavy vintage, such an heir of shadows, Etching solos & minstrelsy. Hazelight into the dowry
Of heaven. Louis: beholder of moldering irises, Too foul for hell. A kind of forgiveness swelled Over her. Pacing, holding a pillow in anger ready
To launch it at his head and on the street beneath, Laundresses, thrushes, straight hustles, brothels, Applause. She throws it as hard as she can.
Just feathers! Just feathers! Pale palisades like goldwhite bells, floating ... Tropically meaningless. Indeed, thought Louis,
Our hero, To funk is only Louisnatural Its daring fears divine. I love to look at you. I love the dusted licorice of your spitblack hair.
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly after James Hampton, folk artist
I read the gospel and heard it call me to build up them silver pulpits,
to cast out witches and devils, done with nothing but these two hands is all.
As I were building it up an angel talked at me from the stairs since I's the son
of a preacher. I collect foil and bust up furniture in a tangle
from out back. Bible plainly say: a fool ignores the word; wicked won't work
for the Lord. I got some warning. I might be a janitor, but I see through dark.
That day comes I'll sure be right since the spirit call me to assembling
these thrones. It tell me like fire: "Sculpt It!" as I almost caught my ghost trembling.
Robert Johnson (the film, the car ride, & the ghost)
"... over 10 seconds of grainy film footage surfaced somewhere of what may or may not be Robert Johnson. Nobody has seen the film, which apparently is being offered for $1.5 million, but everybody has an opinion about whether or not it's of the blues legend." -from a magazine article
-Roll camera:
Iron-colored homburg, burr of cigarillo dangling out jook-lips. A spider light behind spider-hand, & fliptop flimflam of the thumping thumb on the green guitar.
:Lights on-
In each Mississippi town during the car ride:
Friars Point:
A terrific echo tango filled the Terraplane: yowl & powder red in the air from his well, this is it girlish voice.
Midnight:
"Man, be careful! My wife's percolating."
Itta Bena:
H. C. Speir ran a music store in Jackson. All the ladies knew.
Nitta Yuma:
... the blue light was my blues and the red light was my mind ...
Rena Lara:
his mattress was roughage & provender, his shoe was a queen of spades, the Gatling gun of his wet blue heart was like the dead shrimp on his floor.
Some little places that didn't even have names: Thin blues from a steel string Reel brothel mouths. It would put your kidneys to sleep.
Resolution-:
Slippery jass: our needle-thin man died of poison & general dissipation. Never mind the Strychnos Nux-vomica or belladonna in his liquor, never mind the broken seal, but the film! First the gray-yellow tape clicks through the numerals like a peeling tangerine, then that devilment, minty voice like a jack-in-the-box singing Chinese opera. O the dark steeple & the peach falsetto are one. The dog & the mosquito rough it up. There is a terrible cry doping doing all through the grape night.
"Musical shape is the memory of movement"
He could peel the marks off his arms. Blowzéd russet drippingly down. The shack habitués saw the stand-bys. His nod-offs. He was out with Moose the Mooche trying to score.
He took his shoes off and put his feet on top of them. Brown suede. Goof-snuff. Yen pox. Varèse and Wolpe. Klactoveedsedstene. Klaunstance. He blew an echoic mad-bad flight. A girl screamed. A waiter spilled a scotch on someone's lap.
Moa. Teraphim. Altostratus. Fever therapy. Hoopoe needling a tree. High foot-lambert luminescence. Hypozeuxis shotgun house porch preaching. Shofar. And the name stuck. Alchemy.
Chan's almond eyes turned into a pretty melody. The bandstand lifted up from the floor. The thing that consumes the Bird was mostly Bird. Don't try to lie about it. Did Buddy Rich smile when Bird drank iodine? Bipunctate. Vertigo. Geechee. Piccaninny. They called it "Jass-jizz. Bray of the sackbut. Be-Bop." He called it "Modern Music."
Monsieur Sax died penniless in an institution so his Ghost was booing Charlie in the back alley, Smoking Kools and horrified at the tools: Gauze-puffs. Rubber tubes. Angel-puke. Spittle-wisps. He hated his self, his tincture of desire. Chan had to clean up, Scrub down the scruff-dross in the lacquer tub.
Oh man, his sound was a whirlwind, a whine, A cycloptic ballyhoo fat lasso-hoot. People started to squirm, weary and bluesed-out.
In the rumpus that ensued he accidentally Thumped his nut on the corner of the stage.
Bird blew a Dahomey hornblower all-reet Root song and night turned blue.
Who Can Stay the Bottles of Heaven?
Loneliness is a rising music of A space I can only go to without You. The love-god says she'll devote A moment to make it up to me, move Me back to your dance of spells, then above To your pincushion eyes of light. She doubts Anything can be done soon, she's not about To change her schedule for one lousy love.
I miss your cello voice, your midnight lows, The color of your hair, and dancing blue To blue-violet. I miss your until tomorrows, The shape of your wrists, even the way you Say loneliness can be cured with just two Things only you and the love-god can know.
Billie, Later
1 Wounds etch themselves above and below Drink sober lungfulls of hush. Bloodsoap & will, the threadbare Noises of an amber tube and a bird. Welcome to the district of snow-loneliness. My list: a towel for redness, Taboos for my doll, spasms of Amen. Something emerges from a chord- A pigeon egg, snowsilent, resilient, secret Holding its hand toward you, Holding its pink spotlight, Finding a Roosevelt dime, I wake up to a new sun, a clear and tender quiet in each bone. 2 Billie blue as mama's chinaberry tree ain't greased since the big bean collared a nod in the early black back of the club so thick with smoke & lady up front blowing blues till my hair hurts spurts of shying sometimey trouble you know in the black fracture of night she's back hopdog cutie killer diller face like a brown egg beg in the black like jack the bear there lady baby color of a chocolate dress juicy lucy that shazam doowah bang bang outflow sensation called yes
3
I had too many husbands. Last one beat me black and blue- Then he was out the door, He said, Baby better me than you.
I got good and drunk, I couldn't even see. No matter how much money I make, I ain't never been free.
He used to stay out late, Now he don't come home at all. I know by that, There's another mule kicking in my stall.
If you don't like my ocean, Don't fish in my sea. Stay out of my valley, And let my mountain be.
Let me be your rag-doll, Until your china come. If you beat me ragged, I've got to beat you some.
If he walks out the door, He won't be gone long. I'll be up on the stage, In my needle of song.
Frida Kahlo
A hummingbird fell in a pan of heated oil. Purple-crackle & glitter-sizzle. Frida picked it up, three inches of slender feather, brushed it off & in a luminous whisper repeated: Look if I loved you, it was for your flying. Now that you don't fly, I don't love you any more.
Frida was split by a metal trampipe & onto the blood they said spilled a piece of gold. Marvelous gold landed in her open body, a red orchid-goiter & all the people stood staring & saying "La bailarina, la bailarina," little dancer shaped like a keyhole.
Look through the hole & see her knot of monkeys rumbling around her breasts, touching her ovaries, their hairy fingers spread like a Japanese fan, & unlock the keyhole into a Mexican zócalo, a Mayan girl selling fried grasshoppers in a basket.
The Fine Satin of the Eureka Brass Band
1. Your hurts are iridescent sea slugs. 2. You wear those reticent pink fringes. 3. Coils of light warm my face. Something lopes easily through the trees. Your voice is the radiator steam. Orange bodies of earth float to my nose and I taste you, a thunderstorm of sullen red. 4. Touch the paved hole of their noise 5. which more than I can, moves by the Ebony Lounge infused with faith & thin tuxedos. 6. They weren't that thin, 7. The music in 1961 was not austere or clusters of silver like fish on ice. 8. This song is a jointure, as the half-cow girl eating feta cheese 9. knew she was heavenly all night. 10. Whatever the self describes describes the self. 11. The green water of loss was like that day. 12. There is a sole sapling with its Irish perfumes. 13. One moment, my arms were the vessels & solar leaves. 14. Strange Singer stood on the shore, 15. where foam will draw his prints into the full harbor. 16. One man's tercentenary umbrella in a warm glove. 17. I love the parade, its brass grasping. 18. Vita brevis, ars longa. 19. at last, dogs eat their breakfasts, 20. at last, the river of the brass band moves, everything tender, dark muscle contractions under the sun-peach waves.
Lena Horne and Billy Strayhorn in Her Dressing Room
I'm afraid. Just as the water kept running out of the tub. They were elegant creatures with Wet pressed eyes.
I was talking to his eyes. I want to put my hands up to his face And hold it. His heart is a cave, things glued to its surfaces.
My heart is fine glaze on a jug, pouring Red air. O Sweet Pea, I feel empty. Silk streams from her abdomen.
But Beautiful
Silk thread pearl mountain cello scroll smooth notch fluttered valley supple muscle fingerboard taut soprano baby plum stay.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Discography by SEAN SINGER Copyright © 2002 by Yale University. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword by W. S. Merwin....................ixAcknowledgments....................xiii
1 The Old Record....................3
Photo of John Coltrane, 1963....................5
Ellingtonia....................6
Silver Gelatin....................9
Scintillatingly Armstrong....................10
The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly....................12
Robert Johnson (the film, the car ride, & the ghost)....................13
"Musical shape is the memory of movement"....................15
Who Can Stay the Bottles of Heaven?....................17
Billie, Later....................18
Frida Kahlo....................21
The Fine Satin of the Eureka Brass Band....................23
Lena Horne and Billy Strayhorn in Her Dressing Room....................25
But Beautiful....................26
The Clarinet....................27
Inside the Keith Jarrett Trio....................28
Transference of the Blues Dynamism....................29
Susie Ibarra as a Butterfly....................31
False Love....................32
2 The Garden of Delights....................35
Singer Finds His Own Name Among the Dead....................37
"But truly I do fear it"....................38
The Tiger Interior....................39
Goat Moving Through a Boa Constrictor....................41
The Exact Diagrams of German Professors....................43
The Golem....................45
A History of Ota Benga....................46
Loss....................50
The Burghers of Calais....................51
Krekhtsn....................52
DearSinger,....................56
S.S.S.S....................58
Bouquet with Flying Lovers....................59
The Noise....................60
Poem....................62
Poem with Memories....................63
Home....................64
The Emotional Content of Inner Organs....................65
Self....................67
The Gift....................68
A Significant Poem....................69
Finding Love as an Equation....................70
A Soul....................71
Loss....................72
The Vocal Fabric of the Soprano....................73
"Dear heart, how like you this?"....................74
It Moves So Slowly That It Does Not Move....................75
Poem with Groucho Marx Refrains....................76
Singer and Circumcision....................77
The Sweet Obsession Bleeds from Singer....................78
[TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE BY ANSII]....................79
Notes....................81